The next major fashion exhibition to open in London was announced this weekend with a cryptic message delivered via topiaried hedges outside the British Embassy building in Paris. In town for the haute couture shows that run all this week, fashion editors would recognise the silhouette anywhere, even in bush form: Christian Dior’s iconic Bar jacket, an essential component of his revolutionary 1947 collection The New Look.
The bushes told them that the rumour was true. The blockbuster Christian Dior: Designer of Dreams exhibition held at the Museum of Decorative Arts in Paris from last summer until January 2018 would travel across the channel to London. Opening in February 2019 at the V&A in South Kensington, the retrospective will be the museum’s largest show since Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty in 2015, and the largest Dior exhibition ever staged in the UK.
More than 200 rare Dior couture garments will be shown, from Christian Dior’s original designs to Maria Grazia Chiuri’s contemporary feminist T-shirts, via the work of historic creative directors Yves Saint Laurent, Marc Bohan, Gianfranco Ferré, John Galliano and Raf Simons. They will be shown alongside accessories, makeup, fragrance, photography, film, magazines, and Christian Dior’s personal possessions, with a special new Anglophile section exploring Monsieur Dior’s relationship with the UK added on for British audiences, despite our Brexity ways.
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