In tandem with an installation by artist Isabella Ducrot, Dior's Spring/Summer 2024 Haute Couture collection, titled "Big Aura," reminisces on the singularity of couture.

​

Twenty-three dresses, approximately five yards tall, on a grid drawn by irregular black bands serve as the backdrop for Dior's Spring/Summer 2024 Haute Couture show. These monumental pieces echo the dresses of the Ottoman sultans seen by artist Isabella Ducrot in Istanbul.

For Maria Grazia Chiuri, "Big Aura" represents that aura that permeates each couture piece a territory of contemplative rapture where the reproduction of the original is never the same, obliged to adapt in each of its reproductions to the bodies of those who can possess it. It's this aura, which Chiuri and Ducrot refer to in different ways, that reflects the uniqueness and authenticity of the work of art. Chiuri inscribes it in the collective memory.

The House of Dior's creative director explores this concept by revisiting the Dior myth particularly with the La Cigale dress from the Fall/Winter 1952 Haute Couture collection. The latter, in its sculptural construction and moiré fabric, recalls the sacred. We are witnessing an iridescence of the material: gold, white, gray, burgundy, green. Its 2024 rendition takes elements from archival Dior dresses to reconstruct contemporary silhouettes imbued with this same aura. The same goes for materials such as cotton and silk in the color of the trench coat, which seem molded by the body and the environment. Some black velvet dresses enhance the look of the wearer, moving with fluidity in their step while a sumptuous feather cape rests on a double embroidered organza dress.

​

The embroideries are like worn fragments of found poems in which the imagination is lost. In this collection, Chiuri—through the material, chromatic, and constructive presence of the elements that sculpt the silhouettes—reminds us of the auratic dimension of Couture: a powerful experience, not only contemplative but also performative.