Paris Fashion Week is one of the most anticipated times of the year for the fashion community. It follows New York and precedes Milan, but Paris will always be known as a vogue hotspot for the models, designers, and consumers. Paris Fashion Week got off to a hot start with most major fashion companies taking up the calling card for environmental focus. This year, Maria Grazia Chiuri (MGC), creative director of Dior, one of the largest haute-couture brands in history, decided she too would make her mark on the climate change movement.
MGC is notorious for capitalizing on the “freshest” millennium social justice movement. MGC took the helm of Maison Dior in July 2016, following the departure of Raf Simons in 2015. Since then, she has heralded many a campaign, including the infamous Dior-saddlebag influencer episode and the Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie mantra “We Should All be Feminists” branded $860 shirts.
For the Dior prêt-à-porter S/SS20 show, MGC drew her inspiration from Christian Dior’s sister, Catherine, and her gardening-inclined passions. Dior also focused on environmental and eco-consciousness. Yet despite all attempts at a consumer-targeted and activist-based haute couture showing, the presentation fell short as a disappointing assemblage of feigned sustainability and a tragic showing of the Dior team’s limitations of attempted couture.
The classic silhouette-less figure of an MGC model devastated the runway, while others walked their way down the procession dressed in the ubiquitous Dior tulle and mesh. Various foliage was featured on potato sack pinafores and embroidered via the Dior design team. Tie-dye, a couple seasons late, also made an appearance on several garments, in strikingly gross shades of yellow and black. A stand-out from the overwhelmingly mundane may have been the pressed-flower garments, yet even these were tarnished by a cluster of abstract stitching via the Dior design team. Florals? For spring? Groundbreaking.
Despite a long history of work in the fashion industry, Maria Grazia Chiuri remains the sole person in the business that could take something like gardening, flowers, and the earth and turn it into a biohazard post-apocalyptic clothing rack, and somehow get away with calling it eco-friendly.
The clothes consisted of cotton, lace, and a straw-like material. Accessories included the established Dior tote book bags, revamped with stripes and an oatmeal-colored tone. It was beige. The show was beige. Initial impressions of the opening looks were that MGC had hired the cast of “Children of the Corn” and set them loose in Hessian skirts.
With the world’s eye trained on the capital consequences of mass production on the environment, the fashion industry is under more pressure than ever to revamp their manufacturing and consumer habits. 164 trees were taken from various countries in Europe to create a type of “grove” for the show and Maria Grazia Chiuri vowed to plant these trees in Paris after. This is called greenwashing. Similar to Exxon indicating they were reducing greenhouse gases when they were actually increasing, and BAE systems promoting weapons as environmentally friendly, trucking in trees from all over a continent only to be replanted is in no way a benefit to the environment, nor does it have any consequence at all on one’s carbon footprint.
Brands like Stella McCartney are moving forward with vegan and more environmentally sustainable manufacturing processes and Gabriela Hearts, Burberry, and Gucci will offset their totaled emissions, litter and energy waste accumulation with donated funds that will reduce equivalent carbon emissions elsewhere. This marks a change in corporate culture. As the two major power-houses of the fashion world, Kering and LVMH have both declared their goals of reducing their environmental impact. In comparison to Burberry and Gucci’s carbon-neutral shows, Dior falls embarrassingly short. 164 trees replanted does not a sustainable company, nor an adequate fashion show make.
Following her historic trend of “colonizer couture”, and an extraordinary resume consisting of cornrows in white models’ hair (Valentino, 2016) and an unfortunate attempt to replicate the whole of Africa’s culture through Dior’s 2020 Resort showing, MGC continues to take Once-ler-esque advantage of those whose voices have been institutionally sidelined for centuries. Grazia Chiuri is not only found guilty of appropriating an entire continent’s worth of culture, but she has somehow managed to dig her nails into the very earth and throw it up for sale.
One can only hope MGC’s Dior will move forward with their production line and their environmental directives. As more and more fashion maisons attempt to switch to more globally conscious market tactics, one can hope that Dior finds inspiration not only from archived photos of Catherine Dior amongst gardens, but also contemporary activist culture.
Gucci’s CEO, Bizzarri, gave this quote, “A new era of corporate accountability is upon us and we need to be diligent in taking all steps to mitigate our impacts, including being transparent and responsible for our [greenhouse gas] emissions across our supply chains.” With any hope, Maria Grazia Chiuri will also realize these ideals, and perhaps create a more conscious, and (if it’s not too much to ask for), more notable clothing line.
