Elegant but primitive, sensual but wild, urban but animal, the Dior women conceived by Raf Simons, the House’s creative director, are hybrid beings, unclassable, captured in mutation. Zebra or muddied motifs, leathers, exotic skins, furs, slashed fabrics and distorted cutting:through the use of pairings and layering, everything seems to be transforming from the height of femininity to the most unbridled animality. Knitted catsuits mold curves like a second skin, their motifs, drawn from Monsieur Dior’s love of animals, reinterpreted in a psychedelic style. The rippling movement of open-work leather coats reveals their contrasting lining, in the manner of an exquisite carapace. Fox fur, shaped into coats or dresses, is washed out and worked with untamed creativity, as if simply shrugged on before heading out to face the urban jungle.
To round off their metamorphosis, these new Dior women have looked to and reappropriated the male wardrobe in their own way. They've kitted themselves out in tweed or felted wool, made their blazers and coats oversized, and wear them all splashed with bright color or zebra-striped in big, dazzling markings, all expressing attributes of their womanhood. “I wanted a feeling of emotional overcharge in the collection, with this animal and sexual woman dressed in a new kind of camouflage,” explains Raf Simons