Combining elements of painting and textiles, sculpture and craft, her hypnotic shimmering artworks belong to the most prestigious museum collections in the world. Woven with leather in gold and silver, they convey stories that are unique and dreamlike, intimate and universal, echoing her background and her country, Colombia, an El Dorado where many civilisations meet. An important figure in South American abstract art, Olga De Amaral lives in Bogotá, where she was born, having studied and spent time teaching in the United States. In reworking the iconic Lady Dior, she chose her favourite material, gold, which intensifies the light more than any other. Precious metal was the common thread for all three of the models she designed, like divine fragments and extensions of her mesmerising installations. Squares of embroidered cotton and linen were carefully covered with 24K gold leaf applied entirely by hand to both of the medium Lady Dior bags. Tube embroidery adorns the mini versions (one silver, one gold) in corked calfskin. The adornments on the bags are also gold, crafted by hand and hammered like the Charms as an act of homage to intricate craftsmanship. The blue fabric lining is silkscreen printed with a gold rose design that blossomed in the artist’s imagination, its memory kept alive in her secret garden. Queen among the flowers, the rose was also a favourite of nature lover Christian Dior.

Designed to interact with the spaces in which they are exhibited, her immersive installations embrace multiple disciplines without ever belonging to any single one. Painting, sculpting, ceramics and textiles; her creations arouse the senses, are compelling on account of their complexity, and often characterised by many different colours. The American artist Polly Apfelbaum has incorporated graphic motifs and vortices from her artworks, with captivating optical effects, into her two revisited Lady Dior bags. The medium version in multi-coloured lambskin marquetry is adorned with hand-painted designs. The metal Charms include a wind rose – also featured on the bag – a favourite symbol of Christian Dior, who grew up by the ocean in Granville at a house called Les Rhumbs, which takes its name from the thirty two points on the navigation tool. An invitation to travel that also extends to the mini version of this Lady Dior bag, on which the same compass rose features in cheerful patchwork with delicate cotton and silk embroidery.

Culture, heritage, identity and decorative artefacts lie at the heart of her work. Burçak Bingöl keeps (re)visiting history and savoir-faire in developing her art, interwoven with these all-important roots, being both fundamental and universal. Decorative elements from her native Turkey, as well as from monuments in the former capital of Istanbul thus pepper her installations instinctively. Among her artworks are surveillance cameras and tapestries coordinating with women's outfits. Two models – one mini, one medium – of her Lady Dior in chestnut patent calfskin have been embroidered with floral motifs from 16th century Iznik pottery, typical decorations used on Turkish earthenware and given a fluorescent new look complete with a tufted effect. Her third reworking of the iconic bag, a mini version, incorporates traditional colours and blue and white Ottoman motifs inspired by Chinese porcelain from the Silk Road. A unique legacy with myriad influences. This creation revisits the invaluable artisanal inheritance that has endured for centuries through the use of unusual materials such as white silk faux fur hand-embroidered with flowers made from aluminium and blue acrylic, as well as Plexiglas for the Charms and handles finished with silver-tone accessories to complement the silver-tone lambskin lining.

Inspired by human beings, their ideals, their evolution, and more specifically the marginalisation and oppression of minorities, patriarchal authority and the ideologies that feed the archetypes of totalitarianism, Lee Bul seeks to denounce these taboos and cultural atavisms with her monumental installations, suspended sculptures, futuristic machines, drawings, videos and powerful performances… A heavy, intense, invested, political and world renowned work of art. For her reworking of the Lady Dior, the South Korean artist has designed three models by combining various unexpected features such as this extraction of rock for one of the two medium bags, achieved using a high frequency technique and adorned with Charms made from stone and aged steel. Moving from mineral to vegetal, plants feature on two other models in the form of green foam hand-embroidered with silk threads on the medium version; satin and organza embroidered with glass beads and tubes on the mini version. In this way, haute couture, savoir-faire and luxurious materials are brought together, like the velvet that lines the interiors in rich, vibrant shades of purple and shocking pink.

Invited to exhibit at the world’s most prestigious museums, like the Louvre, and passionate about ancestral and artisanal traditions, including embroidery, which is as relevant – in her opinion – to the history of art as it is to that of fashion, Isabelle Cornaro chose to work with this particular technique in redesigning the Lady Dior. The small version showcases masses of precious chains, Charms and symbolic adornments in aged gold and silver, embroidered on silk velvet and bearing the hallmarks of the House of Dior: an eight, the lucky number of Christian Dior, who set up his fashion house on 8 October in the 8th arrondissement of Paris; a clover, one of the precious lucky charms the founding couturier carried in his pockets; letters spelling Dior held in a hand, the hand of destiny, the meeting of chance and determination that so fascinated Christian Dior; a crown – recalling the elegant kings and queens that he dressed and rubbed shoulders with... For the medium model, the artist specially invented and developed a curious new material, a matte black technical leather that looks like rubber and feels luxuriously smooth. Reminiscent of the artist’s impressive series of casts in black elastomer, here the chains are horizontal and appear sculpted, as if moulded from the leather like bas-reliefs.

The odd, the unexplained, the enigmatic, the dream world… all sources of inspiration for Haruka Kojin, a member of the me* collective. Born in Hiroshima in 1983, this Japanese artist regards the Lady Dior as a portable "space", an infinite space for her imagination and insatiable curiosity. She was inspired by travelling on the bus at night and watching the landscapes change with speed and movement. Revisiting the common theme of reflections and her mesmerising works based around the concept of contact lenses, her two reinterpretations of the Lady Dior bag convey this passion for sensation and perception and their countless variations – it’s all about perspective and art always reveals more of this truth, which has the eternal aura of an unfathomable mystery. The medium version of her Lady Dior in metallic silver-tone lambskin is embroidered with an abundance of transparent lenses, echoing the Charms in gold- and silver-tone metal. Gold like its lining, the mini Lady Dior, based on the same model, reveals contrasting transparent lenses glinting like magical mirrors. A unique and precious reminder of the artist's impressive dreamlike, weightless installations entitled 'contact lens'.
* "eye", in Japanese.

Light - its movement and its radiance - is her primary source of inspiration. Nature, water, air… all feature among her main creative influences. She says the use of light and space, at different times and in different cultures, can reveal people’s desires, needs and state of mind. In this collaboration with Dior, the Chinese artist Li Shurui is celebrating "that which only humans and time can conceive", the importance of the savoir-faire specific to crafts and painting, as well as the time spent producing these unique creations. In this way, her work could thus reflect the contrasting relationship between this time apart and that of the digital "flow" of post-industrial society. "By redefining, or defining, the very essence of the feminine aesthetic in a globalised culture, Dior had an incredible influence on the last century", said Li Shurui. To me, the Lady Dior contains elements of every era and season since it first appeared." Her reworked Lady Dior is reminiscent of a hypnotic hologram. This holographic motif is printed on embossed coated fabric. Letters spelling out Dior in gleaming gold-tone metal are joined by an oval charm – like a small heavenly body, a celestial symbol typically found in the artist’s dazzling works – a graded blue homage to one of the House of Dior's colours. Li Shurui / "Lady Dior" China bag in embossed coated fabric with holographic print.

Bold and unrestrained, the installations, photographs and films by the American painter, sculptor, photographer and director Mickalene Thomas portray an entanglement of environments, as well as reflection on women and femininity. Unclassifiable and prolific in equal measure, she creates artworks that are bursting with ideas and colour, blending landscapes and faces, bodies and sceneries, turning icons and references to the history of art and pop culture into collages. The mirror image of her creations, her medium Lady Dior represents an abstract collage, a multi-coloured patchwork of beads, threads and organza. Its ruthenium-tone metal jewellery is set with black crystals. An enchanting imaginary landscape designed like a painting or a photo of the artist, skilfully transposed into the world, qualities and materials of haute couture.

Although painting has always been her passion, she also expresses herself in other art forms, like sculpture and video. For some 20 years, Janaina Tschäpe (born in Munich in 1973) has been creating artwork embracing various disciplines, including illustration and photography. She draws her inspiration from water and plants, as well as the myths and mysteries surrounding aquatic creatures. Indeed, it was her fascination for coral that guided her in redesigning the Lady Dior. She created it as a fragment of an abstract landscape, a wonderful escape in the ocean depths, an imaginary and moving journey, embodied by a creature from the deep; luminous, organic, fantastic and alive. Made from smooth green calfskin embroidered with multi-coloured cotton fabrics, aged silver-tone metal adornments and Charms in shades of green complement its soft pink satin lining, pink being one of Christian Dior’s favourite colours, which he described it as "the sweetest of all colours, one of joy and femininity".

Morgane Tschiember creates works of art from concrete and bricks, making use of unusual materials, welding workshops and boatyards in her collaborations. The French sculptor is also a painter, photographer and videographer. Fond of intertwining and blurring the borders of domains both artistic and geographical, she redesigned the Lady Dior by drawing inspiration from the Japanese culture that influenced several of her artworks and equally intrigued Christian Dior. Available in two styles, her shibari bag draws its inspiration from an ancient art invented by the samurais. The tied cord – metal for the mini Lady Dior and cotton for the medium version – adorns the lambskin bag (in powder pink, or black for the mini model) and is complemented by ruthenium and coppery gold accessories. The lining glows a fiery red, considered the ultimate Dior colour ever since the New Look, "the colour of life" as the founding couturier described his favourite colour. Fascinated by the meaning and power of language, the artist has hidden secret words on the insides of the handles on the bag that reveal themselves when moved: "in contact while closed" and "separate while open".

Pae White lives and works in Los Angeles. Her evanescent artworks appear to defy the laws of gravity, like shimmering musical compositions. Dreamlike yet natural, her work can conjure up a flight of multi-coloured birds, a shower of flower petals – even chandeliers made from countless lollipops. Her installations, some incorporating huge letters made from coloured wool, invite visitors to lose themselves in an imaginary forest. Her Lady Dior bag in metallic dichroic calfskin is adorned with golden orange jewels. The iridescence of this constantly changing material contrasts with the quilted black velvet lining, which juxtaposed against the sheen on the outside gives it a mysterious feel, like an artistic expression of the abyss. Hidden inside the bag are lucky charms and stories like a moon heralding good luck, as well as the reworked 19th century children's tale of the spider and the fly, a story about a cunning spider ensnaring a naive fly with seduction and flattery.