THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS: Who better to shoot a campaign inspired by Virginia Woolf’s “Orlando” than Tim Walker, known for elaborate narratives with a Surrealist twist?
Dior tapped the British photographer to lens its fall campaign at Hatfield House in England, which provided a majestic backdrop for Maria Grazia Chiuri’s time-traveling collection.
She was inspired by Woolf’s story about a Renaissance poet who lives for centuries and changes sex from man to woman. “It’s really to reflect how much fashion helps you to perform,” explained the designer, who stepped down as artistic director of women’s collections in May after nine years at the helm.
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Models Laura Savy, Huijia Chen, Peris Adolwi, Ebba Bostrom and Achol Kuir are captured in wide-angle images posing in front of the country house’s topiary hedges, or indoors in a turquoise blue box with a checkerboard-patterned floor. The sets were designed by Walker’s regular collaborator, Shona Heath.
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“The protagonist’s free, shifting identity is embodied by the models passing through symbolic portals between past and future, reality and imagination,” Dior said in a statement.
Corsets and crinolines were rendered in modular constructions and lightweight materials, but Chiuri’s clearest influences were two of her predecessors at Dior: Gianfranco Ferré and John Galliano.
She echoed Ferré’s signature white shirts and use of brocades and crinolines. From Galliano, she borrowed vintage-style J’Adore slogan T-shirts that were trimmed with lace or layered under a velvet doublet.
Margot Populaire art directed the campaign. It was styled by Elin Svahn, with Sam Bryant in charge of makeup and Malcolm Edwards doing hair.