Dior Talks

In this fourth and final episode of the illuminating podcast series “Mes Chéries: The Women of Christian Dior”, recorded at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, Oriole Cullen, curator of Modern Textiles and Fashion, and Justine Picardie, fashion editor and biographer, discuss the outsize role played by the Dior models and clients and by the editors who propelled the founding couturier’s name around the world. 

When Monsieur Dior showed his famous first collection in 1947, his couture house, like every other, had its own roster of exclusive models. They worked as fit models through out the year, and during the weeks of showings in the salons, and on promotional trips, they were the embodiment of Dior creativity. Selected for their singular personalities as much as their figures, their range of physiques gave clients an idealized impression of how they themselves might look in the new season’s creations. 

Those clients could well include royalty, as was the case, for example, with Princess Margaret who, along with her mother and sister, the future Queen Elizabeth II, was a passionate admirer and an early adopter of this revolutionary Paris style.

Despite previously working as a hired hand, Monsieur Dior was already on several international radars before wowing the world with his debut collection under his own name. In fact, Carmel Snow, the famous editor-in-chief of Harper’s Bazaar at the time, and the one who coined the term “the New Look”, was just one of the media mavens who had recognized Monsieur Dior’s talents when he was part of the stable of designers working at Lucien Lelong, and Robert Piguet before that. Possessing a remarkable eye for talent, she commissioned illustrations from him and followed his career until, on the morning of February 12, 1947, she sat on a gilt chair at 30 Avenue Montaigne to watch a parade of clothes that, with one fell swoop, would change the world of fashion overnight and forever. 

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In this third episode of the enthralling podcast series “Mes Chéries: The Women of Christian Dior”, recorded at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, Oriole Cullen, curator of Modern Textiles and Fashion, and Justine Picardie, fashion editor and biographer, talk about two more of the many important women in Monsieur Dior’s life: Suzanne Luling and Madame Delahaye.  

Remaining faithful to several childhood friends from Granville, Monsieur Dior hired Suzanne Luling to take charge of sales and PR. She had long been a source of stability to him, and as his fame and responsibilities exponentially grew he relied heavily on her as a level-headed and highly capable influence. Having turned to her when his beloved sister had been deported during the war, he turned to her again for her ability at being good in a crisis, whether that was managing the frictions that occurred daily in the workplace, or faultlessly orchestrating events and elegantly taking care of press, buyers and clients from across the globe.  

As a child in Granville, Monsieur Dior had been told by a fortune teller that women would be very important in his future and it would be to them that he would owe his great success. That sense of superstition that emerged at a young age would become deeply ingrained, and by the time he was due to open his own couture house, consultations with a clairvoyant became an everyday occurrence. The woman in question was Madame Delahaye, a suitably mysterious figure about whom very little is known, not even her first name, but the role she played in his life, and in his creative decisions, cannot be underestimated. In a bitter twist of irony, having listened faithfully to her every prediction up to that point, he disregarded what would turn out to be her final piece of advice to him and headed off to a health spa in Italy, a trip from which he would never return.

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In this second episode of the fascinating podcast series “Mes Chéries: The Women of Christian Dior”, recorded at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, Oriole Cullen, curator of Modern Textiles and Fashion, and Justine Picardie, fashion editor and biographer, discuss three key women in Monsieur Dior’s life: Raymonde Zehnacker, Marguerite Carré and Mitzah Bricard.

As this series reveals, a number of women had an outsized effect on the life of the celebrated couturier and the course of his career. He had initially worked with Raymonde Zehnacker at the house of Lucien Lelong, and when he left to start his own couture house she came with him as studio director, but exerted a much broader influence and importance, professionally and personally. Both Monsieur Dior’s right hand and his protector, he described her as his “second self”. Marguerite Carré, on the other hand, headhunted from the house of Jean Patou and appointed technical director, was the genius who deciphered his sketches and transformed his desires, however challenging, into real and covetable clothes.

Mitzah  Bricard, the most fantastical of the three, and regularly still evoked today, [not least in the narrow ‘Mitzah’ scarf named after her,] was also the most enigmatic. This woman “without a past” cultivated an air of mystery, not least communicated by her signature wearing of veiled hats – she was ostensibly head of the millinery atelier, as well as being Monsieur Dior’s muse – and was never without copious jewelry, whatever the occasion, or a leopard-print scarf wrapped around her wrist. The ambiguity of her origins was reflected by the somewhat undefined part she played in the House, a part not rooted in any great appreciation of practicality. As the fashion editor Bettina Ballard once noted of her, she “only understood extravagant elegance” – which proved the perfect way to write herself into fashion history.

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In this first, highly compelling episode of the podcast series “Mes Chéries: The Women of Christian Dior”, recorded at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, Oriole Cullen, curator of Modern Textiles and Fashion, and Justine Picardie, fashion editor and biographer, discuss two of the most important and most influential women in Monsieur Dior’s life: his mother and his sister.

An embodiment of Belle Époque society, Madeleine Dior, the founding couturier’s mother, lived a charmed existence. The wife of a wealthy industrialist, she could afford to dress well and, for the first part of his childhood, raised her son in a large, well-staffed villa overlooking the sea at Granville, where the expansive gardens, and his passion for spending time with her there to learn about plants and flowers, would exert an enormous influence on his later career.

His sister, Catherine, younger by twelve years, was also passionate about flowers, and would in adulthood become a highly successful commercial grower. They were very close, despite their age gap, and when their mother died prematurely, he became almost a surrogate parent to her. During WWII, this passionate and principled young woman joined the French Resistance and was ultimately captured and imprisoned. Her distraught brother turned to another trusted woman, his clairvoyant, to be reassured that he would be reunited with his beloved Catherine.

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Welcome to this seventh episode of Dior Talks. This podcast series will explore the connections between Creative Director of Women’s collections Maria Grazia Chiuri and contemporary women artists and curators. 

In this episode, series host Katy Hessel, a London-based curator, writer and art historian, speaks to Vicki Noble, the iconic and trailblazing proponent of shamanic feminism, the Goddess Movement and the second-wave feminism of the 1970s.

For the Dior Cruise 2018 collection, Maria Grazia Chiuri was inspired to collaborate with Noble on an exquisite and mystical series of clothing, accessories and jewelry based on the groundbreaking Motherpeace Tarot cards which she created with Karen Vogel in Berkeley, California in the 1970s. The captivating results were subsequently debuted in a selection of dedicated pop-up stores around the world that had been specially decorated with paintings and hangings featuring arcana from the deck such as ‘The Wheel of Fortune’, ‘The High Priestess’ and ‘The Sun’.

Vicki Noble was born in Iowa in 1947 but moved to Berkeley, then the epicenter of the hippy and feminist movements, in 1976, where she met her future collaborator Vogel. Together they created the Motherpeace Tarot deck of cards after being inspired by the contemporary Goddess Movement and the vibrant, radical feminism of the era. In this critical period of feminist development, visual art was extremely important and Noble was a crucial figure in the drive to weave links between the new progressive politics, the occult, mysticism and creativity.

In this new episode of Dior Talks we speak to Noble about her extraordinary, surprising and avant-garde career, and about the famous deck of cards which has never been out of production since it was created over four decades ago and which has inspired generations of feminists worldwide.

Discover a selection of works:

Vicki Noble, Karen Vogel, The Motherpeace Tarot, 1978https://books.google.fr/books?id=UWsKAAAACAAJ&dq=vicki+noble&hl=fr&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjOx7zYl-3oAhWQ4IUKHR7wBwsQ6AEIZzAG

https://fr-fr.facebook.com/Dior/videos/the-motherpeace-tarot-by-vicki-noble-and-karen-vogel/1606501142737878/

Vicki Noble, Shakti Woman : Feeling our Fire, Healing our World, 1991https://www.harpercollins.com/9780062281470/shakti-woman/

An interview with Vicki Noble, Dior Resort Show, 2017 https://fr-fr.facebook.com/Dior/videos/1356667151054613/

Marija Gimbutas, The Language of the Goddess : Unearthing the Hidden Symbols of Western Civilization, 1989 ttps://books.google.fr/books/about/The_Language_of_the_Goddess.html?id=WTmVQgAACAAJ&redir_esc=y

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Welcome to this sixth episode of Dior Talks. This podcast series will explore the connections between Creative Director of Women’s collections Maria Grazia Chiuri and contemporary women artists and curators. 

In this episode, series host Katy Hessel, a London-based curator, writer and art historian, speaks to Penny Slinger, the British-born, California-based artist, about her long career and her recent Dior collaborations with Maria Grazia Chiuri.

Specially for the Dior autumn-winter 2019 haute couture show, Slinger designed a unique and exquisite gilded doll’s house as a mystical yet pertinent work of wearable apparel, based on the form of the iconic Dior hôtel particulier at 30 Avenue Montaigne. She was inspired by the building, by each step of its iconic staircase, which, for the show, she transformed and transported to her own surreal universe. This scenography, which celebrates the Dior heritage, the strength and beauty of natural elements, and the diversity and uniqueness of women, subtly references her organic and resolutely feminist output.

Penny Slinger was born in London in 1947, and studied at Chelsea School of Art in the late 60s. Declining an offer to undertake a master’s degree at the Royal College of Art, she chose instead to launch her artistic practice. Her work was included in a group exhibition at London’s renowned Institute of Contemporary Art in 1969. Slinger published a book of her photographic collages in 1971 and Rolling Stone magazine compared its importance to that of The Beatles. Slinger developed her theories and practice around ideas of surrealism and its relationship to feminism. In tandem with exhibiting at London museums and galleries, she worked closely with the worlds of theater and film, consistently publishing books of her visual work and poetry. 

In 1980, she moved to the Caribbean, where she evolved her practice in the direction of archaeology and indigenous cultures. From there she moved to Northern California in 1994, hosting events and residencies for creatives in the region. She became an American citizen and has lived in California since. She has exhibited widely throughout her career, in the UK, Europe, across the USA, Asia and the Caribbean.

Discover a selection of work: 

Penny Slinger, An Exorcism, 1977 https://pennyslinger.com/Works/an-exorcism-2/

https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/penny-slinger-13524

Penny Slinger, 50% The Visible Woman, 1971 https://pennyslinger.com/Works/50-the-visible-woman/

Penny Slinger, Doll’s  houses, 1970-2019 https://pennyslinger.com/Works/dolls-houses-2/

Penny Slinger, Christian Dior Haute Couture at 30 avenue Montaigne (Paris), July 2019 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVl3jLEKfq8 https://www.dior.com/diormag/fr_fr/article/33195

“ Young and Fantastic”, exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, 1969 https://pennyslinger.com/Works/1960s-3d-works/#prettyPhoto[portfolio]/19/

“400 Years of Collage”, an exhibition at the National Galleries of Scotland, 2019 https://www.nationalgalleries.org/art-and-artists/features/penny-slinger-collage-naughty-medium

Penny Slinger, Out of the shadows, a film Richard Kovitch, 2017 https://www.pennyslingerfilm.com

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Benvenuti a questo quinto episodio di Dior Talks. Questa serie esplora la relazione tra  il Direttore Creativo delle collezioni donna, Maria Grazia Chiuri, e artiste e curatrici contemporanee. In questo episodio, Katy Hessel, una curatrice, scrittrice e storica dell’arte con base a Londra, parla con Tomaso Binga dell’inizio della sua carriera come artista concettuale femminista in occasione dell’apertura della sua mostra alla Galleria Il Mascherino di Roma. 

Tomaso Binga è lo pseudonimo di Bianca Pucciarelli, nata a Salerno nel 1931. A 18 anni lascia la sua città natale per spostarsi a Roma dove, negli anni 60, inizia la sua carriera artistica. Le viene chiesto di esporre le sue opere nel 1971, dopo un attimo di esitazione, inizia a creare ed esporre una serie di opere considerate controverse e provocanti dalla società dell’epoca. Il suo alter ego nasce negli anni 70 quando decide di adottare un nome maschile per denunciare il sessismo del mondo dell’arte e della società italiana. L’unione tra Bianca e Tomaso viene celebrata tramite la performance del 1977, Oggi Spose, dove Bianca Pucciarelli sposa il suo alter ego maschile. Il nome è un omaggio al celebre esponente del Futurismo, Tommaso Marinetti, una fonte di ispirazione per Binga. Il nome Tomaso Binga viene creato come sfida al controllo egemonico degli uomini. Una delle opere più celebri dell’artista è il suo Alfabeto creato negli anni 70, dove il corpo nudo di Binga forma le lettere dell’alfabeto. È questo stesso alfabeto che viene reinterpretato per la scenografia della sfilata Dior Autunno-Inverno 2019. Bianca Pucciarelli è professoressa all’Accademia di Belle Arti di Frosinone e vice presidente della Fondazione Filiberto Menna a Salerno. Le sue opere sono state esposte sia in Itali che all’estero in occasione della 38esima edizione della Biennale di Venezia, la 14esima edizione della Biennale di San Paolo e la Biennale di Lione. 

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Welcome to this fifth episode of Dior Talks. This podcast series will explore the connections between Creative Director of Women’s collections Maria Grazia Chiuri and contemporary women artists and curators. 

In this episode, series host Katy Hessel, a London-based curator, writer and art-historian, talks to Tomaso Binga about her long and influential career as a feminist conceptual artist, in the wonderful setting of the seminal Galleria Il Mascherino in Rome.

Tomaso Binga was born Bianca Pucciarelli in Salerno, southern Italy, in 1931. At the age of 18 she left her hometown and moved to Rome and she started making art in the 1960s. She was first asked to exhibit her work in a gallery setting in 1971 and was initially wary of exposure, preferring to leave art world recognition to her critic husband. However, she overcame her reticence and proceeded to create and exhibit a series of highly controversial and provocative works.

The alter ego came about in the early 70s, when she decided to take a man’s name as a statement about the deeply ingrained sexism of the art world and indeed the world at large. The name was an homage to Marinetti, the surrealist poet whose work has been a lifelong inspiration for Binga. ‘Tomaso Binga’ was created as a challenge to men and their hegemonic status.

Binga is best known for her seminal Alphabet works of the 1970s, in which she used her own naked body to form the letters of the alphabet – which was used as part of the scenography of the Dior Autumn-Winter 2019 show – and her 1977 performance, Just Married, when Bianca Menna married her male pseudonym Tomaso Binga. 

She has been a major influence on generations of women artists. She was a Professor at the prestigious Academy of Fine Arts in Frosinone and is a vice president of the Filiberto Menna Foundation in Salerno. She has had exhibitions and participated in festivals and performances throughout Italy and internationally, including the 38th Venice Biennale, the 14th São Paulo Biennial, and the Biennale de Lyon.

Discover a selection of works:

Tomaso Binga, Feminist Works, 1970-1980, Galleria Mascherino (March – April 2020), Rome https://flash---art.it/2020/03/tomaso-binga-feminist-works-1970-1980-galleria-mascherino-roma/

Tomaso Binga: A Silenced Victory, Mimosa House, London (September- December 2019) https://mimosahouse.co.uk/tomaso-binga-2

Romana Loda, curator (-2010) http://dspace-unipr.cineca.it/bitstream/1889/3265/1/PERNA-mostre.pdf

Mirella Bentivoglio, poet and curator (1922-2017) https://nmwa.org/explore/artist-profiles/mirella-bentivoglio

https://www.centrepompidou.fr/cpv/ressource.action?param.id=FR_R-86fcbd9ef0ef89d5cca5d787204b4d91¶m.idSource=FR_P-86fcbd9ef0ef89d5cca5d787204b4d91

Verita Monselles, photographer (1929-2005) https://www.centrephotogeneve.ch/en/artist/verita-monselles/

https://archivioraam.org/en/artist/verita-monselles

Verita Monselles, Ecce Homo, 1976 https://www.artribune.com/attualita/2016/02/dialoghi-di-estetica-raffaella-perna/attachment/verita-monselles-ecce-homo-ii-serie-1976/ 

Tomaso Binga, Dior Autumn-Winter 2019-2020, February 2019 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQNTDiPoN7g

Welcome to this fourth episode of Dior Talks. This podcast series will explore the connections between Creative Director of Women’s collections Maria Grazia Chiuri and contemporary women artists and curators. 

In this episode, series host Katy Hessel, the London-based writer, curator and art historian, talks to Tracey Emin, one of the pre-eminent figures of contemporary art in the UK. In 2017, Emin, whose practice has always been firmly yet uniquely framed within the history of feminist discourse, created a specially commissioned work, Should Love Last, for the Dior pop-up store at 44 Avenue Montaigne in Paris.

Tracey Emin CBE is one of the generations of Young British Artists (YBAs) who came to prominence in the early 1990s and whose work changed the landscape and language of contemporary art in the UK. Yet the immediacy and autobiographical narrative of her work has always set her slightly apart from her contemporaries. Working in painting, drawing, video and installation, and also photography, needlework and sculpture, she has always used her own life and childhood as her subject matter, to reassess the nature of “women’s work” and the position of women, and of femininity, within the frame of artistic expression. 

Emin was born in 1963 and grew up in Margate, a seaside town on the Kent Coast, and her childhood there, particularly her teenage years, form a powerful source of inspiration for her work.

In 1999 she was nominated for the prestigious Turner Prize in London and in 2007 she represented Great Britain at the Venice Biennial. She is a panelist and speaker and has lectured widely, including at the V&A Museum. In 2011, she was appointed professor of Drawing at the Royal Academy.

Discover a selection of works:

Tracey Emin, Should Love Last, 2016 (Dior store, 44 avenue Montaigne, Paris) https://www.dior.com/diormag/en_gb/article/interview-tracey-emin

Tracey Emin, The Mother, 2018 (The Museum Island, Oslo) https://www.themuseumisland.com/en/artist/tracey-emin/

Tracey Emin, Hate and Power Can be a Terrible Thing, 2004 https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/emin-hate-and-power-can-be-a-terrible-thing-t11891

https://www.jessicahemmings.com/tracey-emin-stitching-extreme/

Tracey Emin, A Fortnight of Tears, Exhibition at the White Cube gallery (February- April 2019, London) https://whitecube.com/exhibitions/exhibition/tracey_emin_bermondsey_2019

Louise Bourgeois with Tracey Emin, Do Not Abandon Me, 2009-2010 https://www.moma.org/collection/works/153422

Bow Down : Women in Art History, a podcast by Jennifer Higgie https://frieze.com/article/bow-down-podcast-women-art-history

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This third episode of the ‘Feminist Art’ series focuses on Paola Ugolini, an independent curator and critic. She has curated the Dior-sponsored “Io dico Io - I say I” at the National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art in Rome, a major exhibition devoted to the work of Italian feminist artists, running from March 24 to June 21, 2020.

Born and based in Rome, Paola Ugolini experienced the turbulent decade of the 1970s in the Italian capital as a teenager. With demonstrations a seemingly daily occurrence, she was exposed to political and, more importantly, feminist activism at a formative moment, which shaped her view of art as a powerful means of expression. 

A close friend of Maria Grazia Chiuri, the tradition of feminist theory and art has been an integral part of her work. From her fascination with performance and body art to embroidery and video, the mediums embraced by women to self-represent and make their voices heard have gone from once being highly experimental to now being part of the mainstream. An important part of her role, as she sees it, is to bring such work, and the messages it contains, to a new generation of women, and men. 

In an absorbing and enlightening exchange, she chats with Katy Hessel, a writer, curator and art historian, at the Palais de Tokyo contemporary art museum in Paris. 

Discover a selection of works:

Feminism in Italian Contemporary Art, exhibition at Richard Saltoun Gallery, October-November 2019 (London) https://www.richardsaltoun.com/exhibitions/78-feminism-in-italian-contemporary-art-silvia-giambrone-and-marinella-senatore/overview/

The Body as Language: Women and Performance, exhibition at Richard Saltoun Gallery, October-November 2015 (London) https://www.richardsaltoun.com/exhibitions/44-the-body-as-language-women-and-performance/overview/

Barbara Kruger, Untitled (Your Body is a Battleground), 1989 https://www.thebroad.org/art/barbara-kruger/untitled-your-body-battleground

Carol Rama (1918-2015) :

https://www.newmuseum.org/exhibitions/view/carol-rama-antibodies  

http://www.mam.paris.fr/fr/expositions/exposition-la-passion-selon-carol-rama

Hannah Wilke, S.O.S.- Starfication Object Series, 1974-82 https://www.moma.org/collection/works/102432

Helen Chadwick (1953-1996) https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/helen-chadwick-2253

Ketty La Rocca (1938-1976) https://www.moma.org/artists/65088?locale=en#works

Corpo a corpo, Body to Body, exhibition at Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, June-September 2017 (Rome) https://lagallerianazionale.com/en/mostra/corpo-a-corpo-body-to-body/

Carolee Schneemann, Interior Scroll, 1975 https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/schneemann-interior-scroll-p13282

This episode was recorded at Palais Tokyo (Paris): https://www.palaisdetokyo.com/en