Ever since joining Dior in 2016, Maria Grazia Chiuri has used her fashion shows as platforms to showcase female creatives. The set of her spring haute couture show in Paris delivered one of her most powerful statements to date, with a portrait gallery celebrating 13 prominent women of color.
The décor was the work of U.S. artist Mickalene Thomas, who is known for her paintings, collages and photographic portraits representing Black women against lush backdrops of patterned fabrics, rhinestones and enamel, often using iconographies of renowned artists in order to challenge the male gaze.
For the Dior show, she worked with an embroidery workshop and school in India to create giant panels based on photo prints that wrapped around the inside of the tent set up in the garden of the Rodin Museum.
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In the back and middle were three large sections dedicated to the iconic figure who inspired Chiuri’s collection: Josephine Baker, the American-born dancer who arrived in Paris as a cabaret performer in the 1920s and went on to distinguish herself for aiding the French Resistance during World War II and campaigning in favor of the Civil Rights Movement in the U.S.
Surrounding her were portraits of Diahann Carroll, Dorothy Dandridge, Marpessa Dawn, Ophelia DeVore, Lena Horne, Eartha Kitt, Donyale Luna, Josephine Premice, Hazel Scott, Nina Simone, Naomi Sims and Helen Williams.
In an interview, Thomas says she intentionally chose a mix of household names and lesser-known figures who have strongly influenced her trajectory.
“I just thought that this platform would be really exciting to bring forth and highlight and celebrate the contributions of these particular women that broke the barriers and defied odds within their individual fields and careers, and became very successful,” she says.
“It was important for me to have a diverse group of women,” Thomas notes. “All of them for very different reasons have contributed not only through their individual platforms, but also using their voice and those platforms, to speak about change and speak about particular injustice that was put on to them.”
Their biographies include a long list of firsts for Black American women: Dandridge was the first to be nominated for a Best Actress Oscar, while Horne was the first to sign a long-term contract with a major Hollywood studio. Scott was the first to have her own U.S. television show, and Sims the first to feature on the cover of Life magazine.
“For me as a Black woman in America, they may not be well-known, but they were well-known to me. I’ve seen them in different magazines, from Jet to Ebony. These magazines provided a platform and sense of agency for me as a young woman and growing up where I could see myself in them and see what they were doing,” Thomas says.
Some of them, like Kitt and Horne, have established international careers, appearing in numerous films and musicals, recording hit songs and contributing to social movements. Like Baker, Horne participated in the Great March on Washington in 1963, while Kitt was active in the peace movement and created a foundation for underprivileged youth.
Yet Thomas is equally fascinated with women like DeVore, one of the first Black models, who cofounded the Grace Del Marco agency in 1946 with the ambition of creating a new market for non-white women, and Sims, another prominent model who founded her own wig and cosmetics company and published several books on modeling, health and beauty.
“When the door shut or someone said no, or you had someone like Naomi Sims being told that her skin was too dark, she didn’t allow that to stop her. She was not only a model, but she was a businesswoman and author and she really created change and impact, bringing awareness to Black women’s health through her books,” Thomas says.
“It’s bringing awareness about these women that you may not know, but hopefully you’ll do some research on your own to find out who they are because of this platform, because Dior is also giving them the space,” she says.
Given that haute couture is a space historically dominated by white men, she described Chiuri’s gesture as symbolic. “It was definitely very strategic to do this,” Thomas says before the show. “For Maria Grazia to want to work with me, you know, as a Black woman from America who works in this genre, is a radical statement in itself and it’s exciting.”
Chiuri says she was inspired by the way Baker used fashion to enhance her aura and thwart expectations. She points to the way that the dancer distanced herself from the racially stereotyped banana skirt she wore as a dancer at the Folies Bergère, choosing instead to appear in the pages of Vogue wearing the latest styles by designers like Jean Patou.
A couture client, Baker wore Dior to perform in New York City in 1951 and was pictured attending a Dior show in Paris in 1959 alongside fellow singer Juliette Greco.
“Josephine Baker was a woman that immediately understood the power of fashion,” Chiuri says, adding that this provided a bridge to Thomas’ work. “It’s interesting to celebrate all the women that are references for other women. What interests me is how women of the past can serve as a reference for the future, regardless of the nationality or the background.”
It marks the third time that Thomas and Chiuri have worked together. The first was in 2018, when Thomas was one of 11 artists to design bags for the Dior Lady Art project. The following year, Chiuri invited the artist to put her spin on the house’s signature New Look silhouette as part of the Dior cruise 2020 collection shown in Morocco.
When Chiuri visited her studio in New York City, Thomas suggested another collaboration. “I had already been working on this body of work and idea, and so a lot of these women I’ve created in other iterations, whether it was through my video or painting or photograph manipulation that I’ve done,” she recalls.
Her portraits, under the collective title “Noir est beau,” were elaborated with embroidery conceived by the Chanakya workshop and the Chanakya School of Craft in Mumbai. Chiuri has known its creative director, Karishma Swali, since her days at Fendi, and has been a key supporter of the school.
“Using some of the artisans that Dior has brought to me allowed me to expand on new ways of working, and that’s what you want to do with any new project: you want to open up your process so you allow new ones in, and so for me, I’m already thinking of some other ideas that I can bring into my own studio,” Thomas says.