A traveling exhibition on Christian Dior’s legacy will soon take over Riyadh, featuring a desert-inspired backdrop for an experience unlike any other. Saudi beauty Yara AlNamlah showcases some of the stunning pieces that will be on display.
Maria Grazia Chiuri for Christian Dior, Numéro 667, Haute Couture FW23 Collection. Photo: Álvaro Gracia
Crossing the threshold of an elegant white-stone building presided over by a laurel-wreathed bust, a blue plaque indicating the street number just to the left, it’s hard to believe you are not actually entering the birthplace of Dior at 30 Avenue Montaigne in Paris. This illusion, like so many elements of the Christian Dior: Designer of Dreams exhibition in the National Museum of Saudi Arabia, is a fantasy brought to life. Behind the scenes of this spectacle, curator Florence Müller, scenographer Nathalie Crinière, and countless experts in everything from chiffon to construction, came together to pay homage to the house Florence Müller, that Christian Dior built.
Maria Grazia Chiuri for Christian Dior, Numéro 641, Haute Couture SS23 Collection. Photo: Álvaro Gracia
Originally unveiled in the French capital where it welcomed just over 700,000 visitors, Christian Dior: Designer of Dreams has since traveled the world, from London to Tokyo. Every new setting shapes the presentation in different ways. “For each museum, I am curating a kind of a new show,” explains Müller of the process of working with the conservation team to decide which pieces from the Dior vaults to take. The dresses require a “rest” after months on public view as the fabrics and embellishments become increasingly fragile over time, and Müller notes that even today’s designs by Maria Grazia Chiuri will become archival eventually. To mitigate damage, each piece is displayed on a specially made mannequin, with some of the more extravagant gowns requiring as many as five people to mount. Fashion may be decadent, but…
