Flower among flowers, color, symbol of femininity, opulence, seduction: there are all shades of rose in the exhibition Dior in Roses, from 5 June to 31 October 2021 at the Christian Dior house museum in Granville, a town in Normandy where the designer was born in 1905.
The exhibition investigates the very close relationship between the maison and the rose, through images, clothes, accessories and precious limited editions. A story that has its roots right in the couturier’s birthplace, “plastered with a very pale pink”, to put it in his own words, runs through the gardens most loved by Dior and arrives on the catwalks of haute couture.
There are the black and white shots that portray him in the rose garden of the villa of Les Rhumbs, wanted by his mother Madeleine, posing in Milly-la-Forêt, his retreat south of Paris, without forgetting another space in the green, in Montaroux, in Provence. “It allowed me to find, in another climate, the walled garden that protected my childhood”said Monsieur of this pleasant place, where roses filled the spring with their scents and colors.
To speak of inevitable would be exaggerated, but certainly one can understand how this flower has become so important in the production of the maison, since the very first Dior trials, also considering the fact that in the period in which the couturier started his business the rose was very present in art, from painting to literature.
Source of inspiration due to its shape, which reminded him of the female silhouette, the rose was a constant for Dior, as well as for the designers who have succeeded in the artistic direction of the fashion house and who have reinterpreted this link according to their respective personalities and inclinations.
From the pale pink of the childhood universe, protagonist, for example, of the model Pink Rose, from the 1956 haute couture printemps-été collection, to the rose embroidered in gold thread on the cocktail dress Sari from 1955. An opulent decoration that refers to spiritual meanings, as well as the gold of Diorissimo, Christian Dior’s first posthumous perfume. The precious bottle, signed Baccarat, is decorated with baroque-inspired gold roses, forerunners of Gianfranco Ferré’s Dior season.
And then there is the more intense rose, which sets aside the season of innocence to become bewitching, as in the case of the crimson of the dress Manuela, signed Yves Saint Laurent, with a rose pinned to the waist. The rose at Dior is also a pop color. In the sixties, dethroned by more exotic plants and flowers that impose themselves on prints and dresses, it is the pink color that emerges in its most intense shades, as reported by Philippe Guibourgé’s prêt-à-porter Miss Dior collections, and René Gruau’s perfume advertising campaigns.
The rose, however, is also the opulence of the suit Bluebell Wood, also exhibited in Granville. Composed of a silk velvet coat and a long chiffon dress, it was created by John Galliano in 1998: both pieces are embellished with hand-painted roses.
A bond, that between the rose and the Dior maison, which reaches up to the latest creations by Maria Grazia Chiuri. Last March, on the occasion of the prêt-à-porter fashion show, the designer put flats on the feet of her models with a strap wrapped around the ankle, like a bramble of pink. In two versions, red and black, this shoe tells a contemporary and seductive femininity, which does not forget its origins.
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