‘Among all the other colours, navy blue is the only one which can ever compete with black, it has all the same qualities,’ wrote Christian Dior in the Little Dictionary of Fashion. For her ready-to-wear AW17 collection, shown today at the Musée Rodin in Paris, artistic director Maria Grazia Chiuri explored a colour that was among Monsieur Dior’s great favourites.
Blue is a colour symbol of power, beauty and spirituality, and the collection was intended as a sequence of pieces to reconnect emotions, feelings and memories. The show did start with a dream-like quality in a smokey room flooded with blue light as models entered, each wearing a chic leather beret. Chiuri was inspired by the ample hood and reinterpreted the idea of the Chevrier look from the Haute Couture Autumn-Winter 1949 collection in a series of jackets, skirts, dresses, capes, coats and small bomber jackets. She revisited the extravagance of the original hood through a more contemporary and sporty attitude, and the transgressive use of materials: taffeta, velvet, herringbone motifs and knit.
On the flipside, blue is also the colour of workwear. Blue in loose pants, blouses and washed shirts gave a new identity to the House’s colour story. The denim shown was dark indigo and clean yet casual. The J’Adior branding that Chiuri introduced in her first show was present, on the bag straps slung diagonally over shoulders and peeking out as sheer fabrics revealed the words on elastic waistbands of the garment underneath.
The eveningwear pieces were a highlight. Blue is known to initiate a link to the mystery of the moon, the comets and planets and they exploded on evening dresses of opulent velvet, or on dégradé tulle that blended into the blue-grey of embroidered lily flowers. One dress was beautifully sequinned in a stunning ombre blue effect.
The show notes said that the collection was ‘a nod to the femininity of a colour that unites the ocean depths with the infinity of the celestial vault.’ Maria Grazia Chiuri certainly immersed herself in the complexity of the colour to deliver a wide spectrum of what blue can represent to fashion in a luxurious yet wearable way.
