It was Noble’s book Shakti Woman that led the designer to Motherpeace several weeks before the May show. “In Shakti Woman,” Chiuri explained at a preview, “Vicki wrote that women have to be in contact with their real nature, not let others define us. We have to work so we can define [ourselves] alone, and that was very interesting for me.” Chiuri’s assistant reached out via email in early April, on what happened to be the eve of Noble’s 70th birthday. But unbeknownst to any of them, a connection had already been made. Noble had been using images of Dior’s Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie–inspired “We Should All Be Feminists” T-shirts in her collages. “After they emailed, I went back to see the first time I did that, and it was New Year’s Day, and it was my oracle for the year. Right in the middle is the ‘Feminists’ T-shirt. I got all excited and wrote back about all this magical stuff going on in the background.”

Christian Dior himself knew from magic. He was a devotee of the tarot and is said to have had his cards read before each of his fashion shows. But the decks he used would have been distinctly different from Motherpeace with its strong female archetypes, more than half of whom are of color. Noble and Vogel researched the goddess-based cultures of indigenous peoples around the world to make their illustrations. “We put women back into history,” says Noble. They also made their deck round, changing not so much the structure of the tarot, but the form. Since they self-published in 1981 and hand-collated the first 5,000 decks, they’ve sold upwards of 300,000, but Motherpeace has remained fairly esoteric. Noble chalks that up to the usual resistance to feminist work, especially matriarchal feminism (which posits a pre-patriarchal gynocratic age marked by peace, not war). “We knew lots of women at Ms. Magazine who had cards in their desks, but the cards were never featured in the magazine because they’re offbeat.”

Nearly four decades later, the culture just might be catching up to Motherpeace. Beyond Chiuri and Dior, Vogel says she’s noticed a renewed interest in the deck. “Separately but related, I’ve been hearing people using the word patriarchy, when it used to be fringe terminology,” she says. “And there’s a renewed sense that it’s okay to be a feminist, for sure.” We just might be able to chalk that up to President Trump.