Artist brings spiritual meaning to customized Lady Dior handbags

PARIS — This year’s Dior Lady Art Project bags come with a spiritual salve.

Now in its ninth year, the artists participating in this project explore deeper questions about nature, ancestral traditions and sacred symbols with their own interpretations of the House’s signature Lady Dior bag. We turned a simple accessory into a storytelling platform.

Dior has chosen four U.S.-based artists for this edition, which will be shown in its historic flagship store on Paris’ Avenue Montaigne and its boutique in Shanghai’s Plaza 66 mall in November, ahead of a global rollout in November and December. It is scheduled to go on sale on the 7th. Selected store.

In addition to Jeffrey Gibson for the second year in a row, attendees also included Vaughn Spann, Daniel McKinney, and Faith Ringgold, who died in April at age 93 before several collaborations with Dior were realized. It will be done.

They will be joined by Paris-based Vietnamese artist Duy Anh Nhan Duc. Hayal Pozanti, a Turkish citizen, and Anna Weyant, a Canadian, are both based in the United States. Chinese artists Liang Yuanwei and Huang Yuxing; Sara Flores from Peru and Korean artist Woo Kukwon.

There are a total of 30 limited edition styles to choose from, with prices ranging from €7,000 to €25,000.

Nian Duc and Weyant’s work was unveiled at the “L’Or de Dior” exhibition in Beijing in September, and more will be on display at the “Art ‘N Dior” exhibition in Shanghai next month. is scheduled to be published.

Materials range from Weyandt’s all-gold version of carved and cast metal flowers, reminiscent of Dior’s best-selling J’adore fragrance, to pineapple leather used by Flores, a practitioner of the art of Quénée, to lines and lines specific to the region. It ranges from a sacred system of geometric patterns. Women of the Shipibo-Conibo people of Peru.

The bag’s lining is made from an open cotton fabric known as Tokuyo on Amazon and hand-painted with vegetable dyes.

“The jungle is my studio. Being indigenous involves a sense of connection to life, to the earth and its inhabitants, to the forests and rivers,” Flores said in a Q&A provided by Dior. I explained. “My work is a gateway to the spiritual dimension.”

From his childhood in Ho Chi Minh City, formerly known as Saigon, Nhan Duc developed a deep respect for nature.

“I used to walk barefoot in the city. Back then, there were still dirt roads, and during the monsoon, I would shower under the rain gutters,” he recalled in an interview with WWD.

Although he temporarily lost that connection after moving to France at the age of 10, his practice as an artist has always been about celebrating the nature that surrounds us.

“I love collecting plants and so do my two daughters. I get down on my hands and knees in the middle of a roundabout and the cars don’t know what I’m doing so they honk their horns,” he says with a laugh. I confessed.

Nhan Duc is best known for her installations that incorporate dried dandelions. One of them, Le Champ des Possibles, was featured last year at Dior’s flagship store on the Champs-Elysées, but this was his first time working on a product.

For the bag design, the botanical artist created a plaster mold by imprinting plants and wire mesh into soil. The Dior team then recreated the pattern by pressing it into leather. However, in this case, we used a vegan alternative, apple leather, which is embroidered with plant fibers such as linen and accented with gold plating.

The charms are metallic versions of seeds such as samara, clover, and poppy, but inside the bag is a clear acrylic drop containing a real dandelion egret, designed to act like a talisman.

“I hope it’s a seed of good luck. In any case, since I started using it, it has brought me a lot of luck,” Nhan Duc said. “It’s whatever you want. I mean, if you don’t believe that a four-leaf clover is good luck, it will never bring you good luck. But if you invest in an object that has magical properties, you’ll have positive thoughts.” may continue.”

Blending traditional Native American craftsmanship with a psychedelic pop aesthetic, Gibson adorned Lady Dior with his own version of lucky charms. 70 3D-printed heart-shaped padlocks reminiscent of the lovelocks attached to the parapets of bridges in Paris.

The design was inspired by his most famous work, a decorated punching bag.

“This time, I decided to base my design on a punching bag sculpture I made in 2017 titled “Love is the Drug.” The title comes from the song of the same name sung by Grace Jones, and “The bag is covered with different heart charms made of different materials,” Gibson said in a Q&A with Dior.

The other side of the bag is fully beaded and repeats the word “Love”.

“I often return to the theme of love in my practice. My relationships complicate and deepen what I believe love is and how the concept of ‘love’ It continues to reveal how complex and multi-layered it is. It is often difficult to win and requires a lot of effort from everyone involved. Loving and being loved can be both selfish and selfless. “This is the story of this Lady Dior bag,” he said.