Stars Lupita Nyong’o and Jessica Alba shine as Dior’s Cruise show lights up Marrakech’s night sky
Around an enormous outdoor runway, lit with dozens of floating tea lights, French luxury label Christian Dior criss-crossed cultures and continents with beaded dresses and patterned prints taking centre stage at its first fashion show in Morocco on Monday.
The “Cruise” Collection 2020 – hosted outside the usual fashion week calendar, but which is an important source of sales – attracted celebrities including actresses Lupita Nyong’o, Jessica Alba and Shailene Woodley, as well as model Karlie Kloss, to Marrakech.
As night fell over the city’s 16th-century El Badi Palace and its pool and gardens, the models – some wearing bandanas – showcased flowing gowns in maroon or black alongside patterned styles in fabrics from the Ivory Coast, fashioned into the brand’s trademark synched suit jackets.
Unusually for the French label, it commissioned an Abidjan-based firm to manufacture the cloth, which in its most elaborate form is printed on two sides, and which featured Toile de Jouy-style figures and landscapes Dior is known for.
“You’re really speaking about the human touch here, like in couture,” Maria Grazia Chiuri, the brand’s Italian creative director, said before the show.
The fabrics, found across West Africa and showcasing symbols that are sometimes used as a form of language, had inspired the collection, she said.
Designers Pathé Ouedraogo – or Pathe’O, from Burkina Faso, who is known for dressing Nelson Mandela – and Grace Wales Bonner, a British artist, also worked with Dior on pieces for the show, among other collaborators.
“It helps us to have a different point of view,” Chiuri said, adding that fashion was shifting from a time when it “spoke only with a small audience”.
“The way you can speak about the silhouette, the relationship between the dress and the body, and about how you represent yourself, if you see this argument only from one point of view, I don’t think it’s believable today.”
LVMH-owned Dior and other luxury brands are increasingly turning to elaborate or far-flung catwalk displays to emphasise their Cruise ranges, which tend to have a longer shelf life in stores than other collections.
With the Marrakech show, Dior also paid homage to the late Yves Saint Laurent, who took on the brand’s creative reins in the late 1950s and was inspired by North Africa throughout his career.
A museum dedicated to the designer, who went on to found his own label, opened in Marrakech in 2017.
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- French luxury label’s beaded dresses and patterned prints mix cultures and continents amid floating tea lights at glamorous El Badi Palace show