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The iconic Lady Dior is no stranger to reinvention. It remains as modern today as it did in 1995, swinging off the arm of its namesake, Princess Diana. In part, that’s thanks to its constant state of metamorphosis, with new iterations of the timeless classic ensuring its continuing evolution.
“The Lady Dior embodies quintessential Dior style, at the convergence of timeless elegance and perpetually renewed daring,” Dior says. While the bag’s DNA remains unchanged, the House of Dior certainly isn’t afraid to shake things up – just take a look at its provocative and exhilarating Dior Lady Art Project.
Now in its ninth year, the Dior Lady Art Project brings together some of the world’s most talented artists and artisans to redefine the Lady Dior. Launched by Dior creative director Maria Grazia Chiuri in 2016, the project is designed to stretch the bounds of imagination, with past collaborators ranging from classical oil painters to street artists, conceptual sculptors, fashion designers and everyone in between.
It’s “an alchemical combination of Dior’s heritage and creative freedom, resonating like an ode to passion and the world’s cultures”, says Dior. This year, the project brings together 11 artists to create beautiful and challenging works with the Lady Dior as their canvas. The artists are from Canada, Vietnam, Türkiye, China, Peru, Korea and the US, and “each take their turn in appropriating the Lady Dior as a fascinating emblem of poetic metamorphosis,” says Dior.
That can mean reworking the exquisite bags with every technique imaginable: painting, stitching, embroidering, collaging, riveting, gluing, 3D printing. And everything is on the table, with the artists transforming the bag’s materials, buckles, stitching, handles and even its size. Once the works of art are finished, Dior displays them at selected events globally – they could pop up anywhere. And as the artists usually make more than one of each, there can be around 30 bags each year, which are then offered for sale to the public.
This year, the edition includes cultural techniques as wide ranging as traditional Native American craftsmanship, calligraphy brushstrokes, and kené, a visual language of the Shipibo-Conibo people of the Peruvian Amazon. The result? A visually dazzling feast of unique, surprising and instantly collectible pieces. From intricate beading to charm-encrusted hardware, bold lettering and a completely translucent Lady Dior, this collection has it all.
Anna Weyant
Canadian Anna Weyant may be known for her evocative, moody paintings – she’s a figurative and still-life oil painter – but for Dior Lady Art 9 she brings her work to a new canvas. Weyant’s version of the medium Lady Dior evokes wood grain, an optical illusion that plays with light and shadow and brings a delightful sense of surprise. Her second rendition is an entirely gilded gold mini Lady Dior, complete with sculptural gold roses and daisies that seem to grow wild from the bag itself. The contrast between these two pieces speaks to the artist’s fascination with the codes of femininity and womanhood. Weyant, 29, graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design with a BFA in painting in 2017. Shortly after, she moved to New York and has lived there ever since. “I particularly enjoy painting flowers, ribbons and textured or patterned object surfaces, notably wood grains and metallics,” she says. For Weyant, the simplicity and beauty of the Lady Dior was a dream come true. “I saw it as a blank canvas with so much potential for fun,” she says.
Sara Flores
“Being indigenous entails a sense of connection with life, with the earth and its inhabitants, with the forest and the river as beings,” explains Sara Flores, who describes herself as born in the arts by her mother. Bringing the artistic practices of her people into the spotlight, Flores’ work is inspired by kené, the visual language of the Shipibo-Conibo people, an indigenous group living along the Ucayali River in the Peruvian Amazon. “I was raised in a highly ritualised manner within a community founded on ancestral principles of reciprocity,” says Flores, who was born in 1950. “At that time, the jungle provided everything. We lived without money, private property, or doctors.” For Dior Lady Art 9, Flores transferred her painting technique – done using plant pigments on canvas – to the Lady Dior by way of embroidery. The result is a hypnotic serpentine pattern. In a muted palette of black, grey and silver, these Lady Diors are a constellation of tiny beads, made to honour and celebrate ancient ancestral customs.
Vaugh Spann
Ask Vaughn Spann to describe his universe, and he says it’s “elusive, dynamic and dense”. And looking at his Lady Dior creations, it’s clearly also undeniably tactile and irresistibly playful. In his four Lady Diors, the American traverses the interplay between masculine and feminine – one oversized translucent pink bag echoes 1980s power briefcases – and the personal with the political. Two of his bags, inspired by his paintings Firestorm and Untitled (Stormy), appear scintillatingly textured, as though covered in molten paint. A fourth, strikingly bold, features geometric motifs from several of his paintings. Together, they tell a story of dualities, of darkness and light, the hard and the soft. “My time working with Dior was harmonious,” says the 32-year-old. “We sifted through an overwhelming number of materials. In the end I found that every risk I wanted to take was reciprocated in reward.”
Hayal Pozanti
Becoming an artist was never a conscious choice for Hayal Pozanti. “I’ve been drawing and painting to express myself since I was very little. I wouldn’t know how to do anything else,” she says. Her trio of bags for Dior Lady Art 9 may appear like a shimmering night sky or a garden of flowers, but despite their dreamlike, surrealist quality they are anchored by the artist’s love of trekking. Sheepskin inserts, inspired by the lining of hiking boots, provide texture to underpin delicate beading and embroidery, while the bags’ feet reference the star-shaped tips of walking poles. Pozanti, who was born in Istanbul but now lives in Vermont, USA, uses her art to unpack our relationship to the environment, and her work strives to express living in harmony with the natural world. “Respecting and conserving the nonhuman world. The importance of imagining a world in which this is possible. Dreaming and daydreaming a hopeful future,” she says. Collaborating with Lady Dior was career defining, says Pozanti, 41. “I love that the name comes from a bag gifted to Lady Diana at the opening of a Cézanne exhibition. There could not be a more perfect meeting of the worlds of fashion, luxury and art, in my opinion. As an object, I love the clean, legible architecture of the design. It’s recognisable, versatile and yet incredibly luxurious.”
Jeffrey Gibson
If it’s joy you want, look no further than Jeffrey Gibson. On one side of his Lady Dior, the beaded inscription “Love Love Love” jumps out from a multicoloured background of pop-art love hearts, while on the other a glittering crust of heart-shaped padlocks – all 3D printed – evokes a tribute to the famed Parisian bridges of love. The American Choctaw and Cherokee artist drew on traditional Native American craftsmanship and contemporary techniques to create the eclectic piece that fuses pop culture, heritage traditions and a bright, bold aesthetic. “I decided to base my design off a punching bag sculpture that I made in 2017, titled Love is the Drug,” says the 52-year-old. “The title comes from a [Roxy Music] song sung by Grace Jones of the same title and the punching bag is covered with different heart charms made in different materials.” This is a bag that you can’t help but smile at.
Liang Yuanwei
Art is the ultimate form of self expression for artist Liang Yuanwei. “My practice aims first and foremost to understand myself. I seek to comprehend who I am, how I am shaped by God, and how I am constructed by society.” The 47-year-old Beijing resident is famed for her meticulously textured impasto canvases, exploring the repetitive systems of space and gesture. Her Lady Dior draws inspiration from Ru ware pottery from the Song dynasty (960 – 1279), and the artist had her calligraphic brushstrokes from her work Golden Notes 3D printed in resin, with each individual brushstroke then composed together on the bag to form a swirling, petal-like surface. The antique gold metal hardware is a nod to the gilded rims of Ru wares, and the handles and shoulder strap are inspired by jade. The overall effect is of a porcelain bag, with the artist’s brushstrokes like a crackled glaze. “Painting is two-dimensional, while handbags are three-dimensional objects,” says Yuanwei. “The Lady Dior art project is an opportunity for these two to merge. This Lady Dior design began with 3D scanning my work, followed by breaking down the brushstrokes into ‘puzzles’.” These puzzles were later 3D printed in resin and then manually assembled onto velvet fabric to re-create the image.”
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