ENCOUNTER WITH PAOLO ROVERSI | DIORMAG

"When I arrived at the House in 1998, I immediately immersed myself in the archives: I liked the image of a Christian Dior in love with nature and his garden at Milly-la-Forêt,” says Victoire de Castellane. For the Bois de Rose collection, she has designed a ring inspired by the lines of the couturier's beloved bloom, the rose. "I asked myself: “Why does one always have to focus on the flower or the bud and never the stem?” That's how the idea of ​​Bois de Rose came to me. A stem that wraps around the finger, a symbol of love,” she continues. A design that the Creative Director of Dior Joaillerie has produced in white, rose or yellow gold. Set with diamonds or left natural, they can be worn alone or grouped together.

“Photography is a reproduction, it’s a revelation,”  states Paolo Roversi. His photographs, witnesses to a femininity with a fragile, never static delicacy, attest to this. Born in Italy, he arrived in Paris in 1973, and discovered the work of Richard Avedon and Irving Penn. In 1990, for the first time, he photographed a creation from the House, for the French edition of Vogue: the Rhéa dress worn by the model Mathilde and designed by Gianfranco Ferré, then Creative Director of Dior. From then on, and for the most prestigious magazines, the artist would continue to capture the haute couture pieces designed by Christian Dior and his successors.

Brought together in this book, prefaced by the Italian philosopher Emanuele Coccia, these archives rub shoulders with previously unpublished images unveiled exclusively here.

Through three series of photos, each with the collaboration of a different stylist including the legendary Grace Coddington on whom the photographer called specially, he pays tribute to the founding couturier’s work. He immortalizes his Juno dress, from the autumn-winter 1949 haute couture, and the Voyageur suit from the autumn-winter 1955 season, both of them captured in their eternal modernity in unconventional poses.

Also featured are dresses designed by Yves Saint Laurent, Marc Bohan, John Galliano, Raf Simons and Maria Grazia Chiuri, today Artistic Director of the women’s collections.

Magnified by Paolo Rovers’s aesthetic, they seem to come alive. Thanks to singular plays of light, shadows and blurring, the line between the body and the surrounds disappears. Naomi Campbell, Natalia Vodianova and Kate Moss, whose faces and silhouettes we meet in this collection, are immersed in this dreamlike world endowing these images with a dose of the magic spirit of Christian Dior.

Dior Images Paolo Roversi, Rizzoli

Published in France on 24 January 2018 and in the US in April 2018


168 pages

Dior unveils a boutique dedicated to the world of eyewear, a first for a couture house. Vintage pieces, testifying to its heritage, as well as creations in unique colors are on offer. The DiorSoRealO pair, reworked in fine and subtle metal, receives its advance debut here. A line of small leather goods composed of exclusively created cases is also available. Boxes that can hold one or six pairs of glasses have also been designed specifically for this new address which offers customized services.

In the language of Niki de Saint Phalle, colors speak of love, joy and happiness. Bright and contrasting, they ceaselessly interact. The jewels in the ready-to-wear spring-summer 2018 collection develop this idea in necklaces, rings and earrings with multicolored glass patterns, hand-made according to an ancestral technique.

To follow their creation one must first go to the island of Murano, the cradle of glassmaking savoir-faire, a few kilometers from Venice. There, in Murano’s most renowned atelier, a blower gathers up the molten glass with a rod in an oven maintained at one thousand three hundred degrees Celsius. Then begins a choreography orchestrated by skilled hands that work the incandescent material with a judicious mixture of strength and gentleness. The artisan defies gravity, plays with momentum, controls movement and tames heat. After combining, wrapping and twisting several colors together to create the desired pattern, he stretches the glass canes with the help of a colleague. When the canes are ready, they are cut into hundreds of fine slices, each revealing the unique shape of a star, sun or flower in bright hues.
It takes sixteen different segments assembled together to make a pair of Dior Tribales. Two are required for the heart-shaped drop earrings, and eight for the cabochon of the ring.

For the next step it’s off to Pforzheim, Germany, and an atelier that Christian Dior himself chose in 1955 for the production of his first costume jewellery collections. Here, brass elements are created according to the millennia-old process of lost-wax casting, which consists of replacing a carved wax model with metal. The pieces are then carefully reworked by the artisan's hand, refashioning the finest details of the ring, the necklace and earrings. Following several galvanization baths, the elements will have been covered by a fine layer of gold and then ruthenium for a black color. This specific treatment gives them their particular antique effect, a Maria Grazia Chiuri signature.

Then the bee, the number eight, the clover, the star or the "CD" initials are attached to the glass beads. Once assembled, the jewels are ready to be quality-controlled, before being placed in their box.