Feminism has become an ace to be played on the catwalk. A slogan T-shirt, a low-heeled shoe and a few choice words about female empowerment can be all it takes to occupy that sweet spot where the zeitgeist meets the moral high ground.

But for Maria Grazia Chiuri, feminism is not just a game. Two years into her tenure as the first female designer to lead Christian Dior, her project to transform Dior from a bastion of old-school femininity into one of new-wave feminism is becoming bolder with every show.

Models shared the stage with a modern dance troupe led by the acclaimed Israeli choreographer Sharon Eyal at the collection with which Dior opened Paris fashion week on Monday. Female dancers in tank-topped stretch bodysuits and male dancers bare-chested in leggings weaved and pulsed between the models. Sometimes their movements suggested salsa, sometimes hip hop; sometimes their arms assumed attitudes of classical ballet, while at others it was closer to air guitar. In May, Chiuri flew the escaramuzas, daredevil female Mexican rodeo riders, to perform in a show in Chantilly; this felt like a sequel to that.

Dancers perform alongside models at Christian Dior’s Paris fashion week show. Photograph: Andre Pain/EPA

Paris fashion has a venerable history of association with ballet: Christian Dior himself designed the wedding dress of Margot Fonteyn, whom he adored. Yet this was very deliberately different. “The classical tradition in ballet does not speak about real female bodies,” said Chiuri backstage shortly before the show. “The history of ballet specifies a body shape that is not natural and it demands movements that are not natural ones for our bodies. Female choreographers – Isadora Duncan, Pina Bausch – they broke those rules.”



Chiuri’s comparison is a sharp one. Ballet rivals even fashion for a dubious history of fetishising thinness. The technique of dancing en pointe was developed as a way to make dancers appear weightless. “Fashion, in the past – it was the same as ballet,” said Chiuri. “[Fashion] wanted to control women and to constrict their bodies. We are living in a revolutionary moment now. This is a new time, when fashion should support women, not control them. Dance can show how things can be different. At a revolutionary time a great house like Dior has to be aware of the change happening all around.”

Dior dresses were made without corsetry or underwiring. Photograph: Swan Gallet/WWD/REX/Shutterstock

Chiuri became entranced by the power of dance to let women own not just their bodies but the space around their bodies when commissioned to costume the American Ballet Theatre for a special performance at the New York Guggenheim last year. The silvered, veined bodysuits she created were in her mind when, in July, she phoned Eyal and asked if she would be interested in a collaboration. “Dance speaks about the body and freedom and fashion speaks about the same things,” says Chiuri.



The impact of this mindset on the clothes themselves was pleasingly direct. There was no corsetry; no invisible waist-cinching engineering in this collection. The underpinnings, instead, were stretchy leotards, racer-back stretch vests and footless tights. Long, fluid dance dresses in pleated jersey were inspired by Isadora Duncan’s coolly elegant costumes, said Chiuri. The midi-length, corps-de-ballet gowns with pert bodices and logo-printed bra straps which have been a home banker in the Dior boutiques since Chiuri brought them back this season had no underwiring and an elasticated waistband. “I kept the traditional Dior shapes, but removed the corsets. The challenge of course is how to make the shape elegant still? But I believe that even something special should be comfortable.”



Chiuri’s experimentalism has its limits. The stand against ballet’s tyrannically narrow definition of the acceptable female body would have been significantly more powerful had her models not been exclusively within ballerina-approved parameters of body fat percentage. The narrow casting of the models stood in odd contrast to the gloriously diverse shapes of the dancers. But as a full-throated contribution to the cultural conversation, the show stood head and shoulders above slogan T-shirts.

