Dior hosted its cruise 2024 show in Mexico City, where the house paid tribute to one of the most famous artists to ever hail from the country: Frida Kahlo.
“I first saw her work at an exhibition in Rome when I was a teenager, the first show I’d ever seen by a woman artist, and it made a lifelong impression,” creative director Maria Grazia Chiuri said backstage ahead of the show. “It really touched me deeply. Her work is so inspiring for women. What she did for her time was unbelievable.”
The show took place at the Antiguo Colegio de San Ildefonso, which is where Kahlo studied, and where she met husband, Diego Rivera. In many ways, the show was a love letter to both Kahlo’s work, to feminism and to Mexico more generally. The clothes paid tribute to specific pieces (including a pink dress that Kahlo wore in one of her self-portraits) while there were other references to the way Kahlo played with gender boundaries (“She spoke about gender, about identity, which was incredible for her time. She spoke about everything we discuss today. She was pioneering”), and took inspiration from Mexican culture more generally. The collection also looked to the Dior archives for inspiration, and some of the pieces that founder Christian Dior had created which referenced to his travels to Mexico. This included a moth motif which was taken from a sketch done by Andrée Brossin de Méré for one of Dior’s early collections.
And, as is always the case with the shows that Dior hosts in far-flung destinations, the team collaborated with local craftspeople and artisans, who helped to put together the collection, while the show also saw a performance by Mexican feminist artist Elina Chauvet take place.
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