‘Dior: From Paris to the World’ opens at DAM

“Deep in every heart slumbers a dream and the coutierier knows it: every woman is a princess.”– Christian Dior

Florence Müller and her team captured the essence of Christian Dior in curating the new “Dior: From Paris to the World” exhibit at the Denver Art Museum, unveiled Saturday evening. 

Many women were princesses in the crowd, including major donor Joy Dinsdale in a glittering gold Dior gown picked out for her by her husband Chris, and her daughters Chloe and Jillian, also in Dior. Joy gave us all license when addressing the crowd: “I am not shopping, I am collecting.”

Also seen in the crowd were several other eras of Dior designs, including a rare 1959 haute couture Dior dress worn by Alessandra Schulein.

After welcome remarks from Director Dr. Christoph Heinrich, Joy Dinsdale and Florence Müller, the exhibit officially was presented to the Denver crowd, and the world.

The designs are breathtaking. The essence is beyond memorable.

Dior: From Paris to the World surveys 70 years of the House of Dior’s enduring legacy and its global influence. A selection of more than 200 couture dresses, as well as accessories, costume jewelry, photographs, drawings, runway videos, and other archival material, trace the history of the iconic haute couture fashion house, its founder, Christian Dior, and the subsequent artistic directors who carried Dior’s vision into the 21st century.

Christian Dior, the art gallerist who became a celebrated couturier, generated a revolution in Paris and around the globe after World War II. Dior created haute couture expressing modern femininity, completely shedding the masculine silhouette that had been established during the war. He conceived sophisticated designs featuring soft shoulders, accentuated busts and nipped waists that marked the beginning of an epic movement in fashion history that would eventually lead to Dior successfully becoming the first worldwide couture house.

The chronological presentation, showcasing pivotal themes in the House of Dior’s history, focuses on how Christian Dior cemented his fashion house’s reputation within a decade of his humble beginnings in 1947 and highlights how his successors, Yves Saint Laurent, Marc Bohan, Gianfranco Ferré, John Galliano, Raf Simons and Maria Grazia Chiuri, incorporated their own design aesthetic.

This exhibition is organized by the DAM and curated by Florence Müller, the DAM’s Avenir Foundation Curator of Textile Art and Fashion. This is the culmination of three years of planning to make Florence’s dream a reality. It features exhibition design by internationally renowned architect Shohei Shigematsu, principal of OMA New York.

Visit www.denverartmuseum.org to find out more information and schedule a tour of this once-in-a-lifetime display.