Feminist and feminine: Dior recreates Lady Dior bags with global female artists

Dior’s 2019 Spring/Summer collection has now launched in Bangkok stores. Their launch date was last Friday, also International Women’s Day. This was no coincidence, of course, considering Christian Dior was known for adoring women and femininity. Now that the fashion house is led by their first female Creative Director, Maria Grazia Chiuri, feminism has truly been put at the forefront of the brand.

[All images credit: Dior]

Dior Lady Art is a recent project that collaborates with artists around the world to recreate Dior’s most iconic bag. The Lady Dior handbag was popularised as arm candy in 1995 by Princess Diana, making it the ultimate strong female accessory. So for the third instalment of this art project, and for the first time ever by the direction of Chiuri, the ‘Ladys’ will be designed exclusively by the ladies. 11 female artists of various ages and nationalities were invited to give the famous handbag their own signature touch. At Dior’s collection launch hosted in Emporium last week, we had a closer look at these feminine and feminist artists’ bags.

Polly Apfelbaum (USA)

Fans of kaleidoscopes love this Pennsylvania-born artist with her colourful and geometric artwork, but she’s also been a gallery favourite since the 1980s.

Haruka Kojin (Japan)

Born in Hiroshima, Kojin is famous for her “contact lens” artwork, portraying things like flowers and feathers as if through trippy and warped eyesight.

Burçak Bingöl (Turkey)

With her richly decorated ceramic work, Bingöl questions Turkish society and heritage, combines cultural and personal stories, and defamiliarises everyday items.

Mickalene Thomas (USA)

With her mixed-medium, collage, and patchwork style, the African-American artist is known for tackling issues of race, gender, and sexuality in her work.

Olga De Amaral (Colombia)

This abstract artist works with metallic leaf and fibres as her signature power materials — and she’s still going strong at 86 years old.

Li Shurui (China)

Few Chinese female artists can get such regular solo shows. But this graduate of the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute has been a hit at galleries worldwide with her funky explorations of how light and space influence emotion.

Pae White (USA)

This LA-based artist focuses on exploring the point where art and architecture meet. Her work constantly attempts to nudge the viewer off balance by changing their relationship to an everyday object.

Isabelle Cornaro (France)

Isabelle Cornaro uses everything from painting and sculpture to physical installations and film to challenge the way art objects are perceived.

Lee Bul (Korea)

As an artist determined to challenge patriarchal authority and the marginalisation of women, Bul is good at drawing attention. Displaying at the MoMa (The Museum of Modern Art in the United States), she brought in real rotten fish to make the smell a part of her artwork, and highlight the process of time passing. She’s still turning heads here with her cool “Broccoli Bag”, as they call it at Dior.

Morgane Tschiember (France)

This sculptural artist experiments with an object’s relationship to the space around it. Her art pieces stand in three dimensions and also include action, movement, flux, and fluids.

Janaina Tschäpe (Germany)

A lover of nature and myths, the Munich-born and São Paolo-raised artist constantly features oceans, sea creatures, mermaids, and other half human creatures in her imaginary landscapes.