Dior in Tokyo: 8 New Couture Looks to Love

8 new looks for Dior in Tokyo

Christian Dior had a fear of flying and never traveled to Japan, yet the Land of Rising Sun always had a special place in heart.

In his memoir, he recalled how he regularly spent hours gazing at the large Japanese print panels that decorated the stairway of his childhood home: “These interpretations of Outamaro and Hokusai were my Sistine Chapel.”

This week, Dior inaugurated a new boutique in Ginza, Tokyo and as part of the celebration presented its Spring 2017 haute couture collection, first shown during Paris couture week in January, also recreating the décor of the labyrinthine garden that inspired Maria Grazia Chiuri’s first couture collection for the house of Dior.

As if created for Titania in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Chiuri’s collection had ethereal dresses, softening the corseted look usually associated with Dior. The runway collection started with a few nods to the signature Bar jackets, now deconstructed and reinvented as a cape, which quickly gave way to sweeping romantic gowns featuring lace and tulle overlays in powdery shades of mauve, blue, pink, or gray that evoked the passing of seasons.

For this Spring 2017 Haute Couture Colleciton, the designer trapped embroidered flowers in layers of tulle, as if to preserve them in a delicate herbarium, but also incorporated divination symbols, from embroidered stars to hand-painted tarots figures .

For the special presentation in Tokyo, Chiuri also created eight additional looks inspired by a 1953 design, the Jardin Japonais, an afternoon ensemble with cherry blossom motif.

The new creations offered delicate embroidered flowers paired with bird motifs, a meeting of the haute couture savoir-faire with the culture of Japan.

Particularly fetching was a embroidered bar jacket with a hood in golden silk, along with a barely-there organza cape, embellished with flower applique. Feathers were incorporated in two long gowns, while the designer appealed to a young clientele with a pair of shorts teamed with a bar jacket.