Christian Dior Spring-Summer 2022 Haute Couture Fashion Show

The atelier – where head and hands work in concert – is both an instrument and a place of experimentation; a living organ where savoir-faire and savoir-être meet and evolve, in the course of a collaboration that constantly reaffirms the magical and scientific language that is haute couture. This is the emblem of the Dior Spring-Summer 2022 Haute Couture Collection, designed by Maria Grazia Chiuri, through which the Creative Director of Dior’s women’s collections honors human relationships with handmade objects, expressing a desire to abolish the boundaries between art and craft once and for all. The body is thus a vector for breathing life into avant-garde projects.

Embroidery becomes a three-dimensional conceptual act that reinvents the atelier’s techniques and elemental excellence; it progresses through a choreography of movements and is not merely a decorative detail. It gives fabric its structure, its architecture. The embroidery, which stands out from – and interacts with – the material, rendering it evanescent and prompting an interplay with the surrounding air, as seen in the contrasting of a long, all-over embroidered ecru skirt with a sheer silk organza shirt.
The tights, a signature of the collection, also derive their spectacular dimension from embroidery to establish a lively dialogue with different pieces, from a grisaille-bedecked grey suit to evening dresses that marry the finesse of embroidery with the lightness of tulle, through a series of draped leotards. Here is Maria Grazia Chiuri reasserting the syntax and grammar of the atelier, the purity of lines fundamentally celebrating the very role, the essence of couture: to dress the body.
Elsewhere, cashmere coats embrace the silhouette and sleek capes in resplendent white conceal jacket-and-pant ensembles. Pleated skirts billow under structured coats, while the silver lamé jacquard fabrics of dresses highlight each movement of the body. These embroidered patterns, through which Dior’s heritage is reinterpreted, become the central element, and, following the rules of couture, are transformed by a vision that makes the atelier a collaborative mode of expression, where haute couture is a form of constant experimentation and questioning.