Dior Le Château du Tarot

Christian Dior never hid his belief in the divinatory arts, signs and symbols. His autobiography is marked by often fateful encounters with fortune tellers: “It will be extraordinary! The House will revolutionize fashion.”

Tarot cards are one of the keys to accessing the world of magic: exploring the unknown while looking deeply within oneself without fear. Maria Grazia Chiuri immediately felt a connection with the imaginary figures and the visionary language made up of complex and fascinating characters that speak in symbolic terms. In these uncertain times in which we feel the need to reconnect with the soul of the world, for the Spring-Summer 2021 Haute Couture Collection, Chiuri decided to use the mysterious and pluralistic beauty of tarot cards in her collection of enchanting gowns and create the synthesis of a design project that expresses the virtuoso constructions that define couture as the territory of experimentation and the possible. 

The silhouettes of the exquisite evening gowns become abstract montages: some of them feature bas relief open-work bodices embellished with drawings by Pietro Ruffo. The artist from Rome created a unique deck of tarot cards in which the figures disappeared to make room for the artistic vitality of the symbols. Dior Grey is accented in tweed, cashmere and organza on dresses, shirts, skirts, pants and capes. The black velvet Bar jacket is reinterpreted in its curves to express a new attitude. 

Matteo Garrone, one of Italy’s most high-profile directors, creates an iconographic narrative that draws on the visual force of the Visconti-Sforza tarot. The deck of tarot cards decorated by Bonifacio Bembo for the Duke of Milan in 15^th century, illustrates the magnificent tale for the collection. The splendid cards, embellished with gold, enamel, plant and geometrical interlacing have an enigmatic and solemn presence that reveal an inner journey, an adventure in self-discovery. The journey takes place within a castle populated by figures that embody the Major Arcana who question and disorient, inviting the viewer to see the world from a new perspective. In the director’s interpretation, the journey goes beyond gender boundaries and presents a synthesis of masculine and feminine in a new heraldic mythology that evokes the enchanted worlds that Garrone is so fond of.

A fortune teller asks a young woman to choose a card from a deck designed like a catalogue of possibilities, a list of opportunities, a cryptic dictionary of the world. The High Priestess, the Empress, Justice, The Hanged Man, the Fool and the Devil wear clothes that become visual sequences revealing a masterful repertoire of savoir-faire that celebrate the art of weaving captured through lace inlaid with hand-painted embellishments, golden velvets inspired by the signs of the zodiac, precious jacquards sprinkled with glimmering stars and a cape with multicoloured feathers that feature artworks in 3D.

In this story, the initiate always needs a female complement and vice versa. Only such a fusion makes it possible to approach a journey across growth that leads to self-awareness. As Italo Calvino said in The Castle of Crossed Destinies, “The world has to be read upside-down.”