The latest addition to Dior’s handbag stable is more like an heirloom than something used to simply carry your iPhone and credit cards. Its Lady Dior bag, square-shaped and super elegant with its tidy top handles, has become a blank canvas for 11 artists from around the world. The results will be available for a limited run in Dior’s New Bond Street store and Selfridges concession.
The India-born, New York-based sculptor Rina Banerjee’s bag looks like a chunk of coral on first inspection as it’s covered in cowrie shells and clusters of pink, orange and blue beads.
‘Currency is the most common thing that we share when we interact with people,’ she explains in the video series accompanying the bag’s release, ‘So these cowrie shells are ancient currency I’m referring to.’
The Brazilian sculptor Maria Nepomuceno, meanwhile, has handsewed beads onto her bag to make blossoming flowers joined by tentacles. Seoul-based painter Jia Lee wanted her bag to double as a bouquet of flowers. ‘I chose soft and airy silk to express the petals delicately,’ she explained.
The French house has form in fusing the worlds of fashion and art, with its creative director Maria Grazia Chiuri mining the work of Tomaso Binga and Leonor Fini for previous collections.
Maybe you’ll carry the Lady Dior like a piece of wearable art. Or keep it preserved in a glass class to be admirely daily. It’s entirely up to you.
SEE: How A Dior Saddle Bag Is Made
Exclusive: See Behind The Scenes Of The Dior Saddle Bag Ressurection - Grazia
1 of 4Behind The Scenes Of The Dior Saddle Bag Ressurection - Grazia
2 of 4Behind The Scenes Of The Dior Saddle Bag Ressurection - Grazia
3 of 4Behind The Scenes Of The Dior Saddle Bag Ressurection - Grazia
4 of 4