Dior and I

In 2012, the house of Dior agreed to open its doors to Frédéric Tcheng and allow him to film the development of the first collection by its new creative director, Raf Simons. With a past as a furniture designer, Simons had just ended his appointment at Jil Sander’s and arrived to fill the void left by John Galliano after his controversial 2011 dismissal.

For eight weeks – the time available – the film crew occupied the rooms of the legendary Parisian maison, delving deep into the atelier in Avenue Montaigne. The result is a personal, delicate, unadorned and sincere story. Previously shown only once, on 3 June 2015, the documentary chosen by the curator of the “Modarama” section, Maria Luisa Frisa, was a pleasant surprise for the audience at the third Milano Design Film Festival.

  In 90 fast-moving minutes, Tcheng goes behind the scenes to show the tensions and grind of the manual work that goes into a haute couture collection. It contains the legacy of the vision of the great couturier Christian Dior (who died suddenly in 1957) who, in just ten years, revolutionised the way women dressed, generating an empire that has survived him by more than 50 years. There is the dressmaking excellence and the “petites mains” that model fabrics and lend shape to ideas with pins, needle and thread. There are, of course, the intuitions, ideas and style of a new creative director who embarked on his adventure by reviving the style codes of the first five years of the Dior archives but who seems almost to step back when he finds himself all too close to the personality of the house’s founder, like him a huge lover contemporary art.

The film culminates with the fashion show on 5 July 2012, in the rooms – packed with fashion workers – of a Modernist mansion on Avenue Iéna, its walls entirely covered with fresh flowers for the occasion. It is the consecration of the new face of Dior but also a demonstration that a project is a team effort and the product of the subtle combination of culture, specific skills and mutual trust between designers, craftspeople and industry – in fashion as too in design and architecture.

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Dior and I
Regia: Frédéric Tcheng
Durata: 90 minuti
Francia, 2014