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ladystylestores · 4 years ago

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Dior Debuts Exhibition and New High-Jewelry Collection in Shanghai – WWD

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SHANGHAI — It was a rare night at the unveiling of Dior’s “Designer of Dreams” exhibition to see more than 700 guests gathered in one place.

As China has slowly recovered from COVID-19 over the past few months, fashion brands have put on cocktails, intimate dinners and even a concert here or there. But the Dior opening at the Long Museum was the first truly large-scale fashion event of the year here, a full seven months into 2020, and the crowd turned out with gusto.

The exhibition was originally planned for May, but finally made its debut on Friday. Shanghai is the third destination for the retrospective after Paris and London — officially open to the public on July 28 and running until Oct. 4 — allowed by the fact that the city has managed to dodge the second and even third COVID-19 outbreaks that have cropped up in cities like Beijing and Hong Kong.

All in all, it has been a very busy week for the French house. The day before the exhibition opened, the brand showed digitally its cruise collection inspired by Puglia and right after the opening, it had planned its largest showing of high jewelry for its VIP clients, also in Shanghai.

Exhibition curator Oriole Cullen, speaking by phone due to ongoing travel bans, laid out just how much of a logistical feat it was to set up while the team was spread across China, Paris, London and Montreal.

“The team at Dior created nearly 80 individual films for colleagues in China to explain how the archives needed to be dressed,” she said. “It was 10-hour Zoom calls every day with China in terms of the install.”

Because the Chinese audience is most familiar with the modern-day Dior, Cullen said it was a purposeful choice to place a piece from Maria Grazia Chiuri at the front to greet visitors along with the facade of 30 Avenue Montaigne. Inside, 275 haute couture dresses are on show, arranged in 14 themes ranging from the New Look, Christian Dior’s life, highlights from the six subsequent designers that have led the house, and conceptual favorites like Versailles, the atelier, gardens and the label’s many moments created with Hollywood stars and royalty.

Dior’s “Designer of Dreams” exhibition in Shanghai. Matjaz Tancic/WWD

To adapt the exhibition to the market, Cullen said the brand consulted with Hung Huang and tapped into its collaborations with Chinese artists such as Xu Bing, Lin Tianmiao, Gao Weigang, Wang Guangle and Yan Peiming, and editorial photography over the years featuring Dior by Feng Hai, Leslie Zhang and Gangao Lang.

While some artworks like Lin’s “Procedure” installation had been commissioned by Dior for earlier shows, Gao, for instance, had created an installation art piece inspired by the J’adore perfume that involved creating a tiered, gold pyramid-like structure atop which sat a spherical moon, representing the feminine.

Christian Dior’s personal exploration of China was also showcased, manifesting in looks named Pékin, Chinoiseries, Nuit de Chine, Hong Kong and Bleu de Chine. The founder also paid homage to Chinese calligraphy through ideogram-printed dress and his use of jacquard.

On Saturday though, the house changed tack to pamper its high-jewelry VIPs at the Amanyangyun. Over the next three days, ensconced in the neoclassical Chinese resort located on the far outskirts of Shanghai, the brand planned to entertain more than 100 guests with cognac and tea tastings, yoga, Ebru workshops, and origami making.

Come evening, the jewelry would be presented beside the resort’s river in a cocktail presentation format on models in 16 flowy Grecian couture looks designed by Chiuri and followed by a dinner in a long gazebo re-created to resemble a French garden.

Dior presented 16 new couture looks at the presentation. Matjaz Tancic/WWD

But some VIPs were not waiting for the full effect. By afternoon, pieces from the colorful tie-dye-inspired jewelry collection were already being snapped up and taken out.

“The inspiration was tie-dye fabric, a pattern that has been used quite a bit at Dior by various designers of the house. I thought it was interesting to replicate the effect with jewelry,” explained the house’s longtime jewelry designer Victoire de Castellane, also by phone interview.

“I love working with color, I love imagining movement with color,” continued the designer, who has explored new combinations of stones over two decades in the position — building a vast fan base along the way. Many pieces in this collection focused on one color, offering it in various gradations, including a deep blue ring in white gold that carries a cluster of diamonds, tanzanites and sapphires or a similar one anchored with a prominent emerald with various hues of tsavorite garnets gathered around one side, adding asymmetry — and lightened with a row of diamonds.

Dior’s high-jewelry collection presentation in Shanghai. Matjaz Tancic/WWD

“I played with the idea of dye, as if the stones were dye that introduced streaks of color and gradations of color,” she explained.

“With tie-dye, there is white space — I did this with diamonds, the white part is symbolized with diamonds,” noted de Castellane.

“I found it quite amusing to do this with jewelry,” she concluded.

The designer agreed that the new jewelry recalled a previous examination of color, the “Gem Dior” collection, which worked bright stones into stark pieces meant to represent pixels. But here, the exploration of color is more gentle.

“It’s a bit softer, with different movement, as if the colors mix and move, whereas the previous one was more mineral and more static,” she noted.

Conveying this softness were pearls — a key element of the collection.

“It was the first time I used pearls,” laughed de Castellane.

“I am fascinated with pearls, in antiquity, they were called the tears of Venus — the symbolism of the idea that Aphrodite, or Venus cried in the sea and the tears became pearls. I find it such a lovely story,” she said.

Dior’s high-jewelry collection presentation in Shanghai. Matjaz Tancic/WWD

A pair of earrings had a large white pearl — perched on the top of one side, and set on the bottom of the other earring — offsetting a cluster of small diamonds and a large ruby.

“I’m also fascinated by the roundness of pearls, they’re like small, silky spheres, next to the gemstones that are bursting with color,” explained de Castellane.

“I find it very beautiful to set them against one another — the softness and tenderness of the pearls with the forcefulness of stones,” she said.

She also used colored pearls—including pink, golden and pistachio pearls — to bring new forms of color. The golden pearls served as the focal point for a pair of long earrings, with rows of various cuts of diamonds snaking around them, fixed with yellow gold.

“When it comes to the size of the stones, I always like to maintain a lot of freedom, I enjoy mixing different forms and volumes — this is what makes things more lively, and less static,” said de Castellane.

“I like the idea of mixing cushion cuts, oval shaped stones, round cuts — there were a lot of small, round stones — bringing them together in a way that creates movement and turns,” she explained.

While pearls normally sit at the center of traditional jewelry, the designer rearranged them, nudging them to one side of a ring, or plopping them on top of a cluster of stones, including a pink sapphire the same size, like the proverbial cherry on a cake — but on an earring.

“In traditional jewelry, the pearl is often at the center of a piece — here, I put it to the side, to show that it is something more than just a classic centerpiece,” noted de Castellane.

As for colored stones, she said she drew on the whole range customarily used by the house, rattling off a few — emeralds, rubies, various-colored sapphires, tanzanites, tsavorite garnets and paraiba tourmalines.

There were no opals, however.

“It’s funny, I didn’t use them this time — I didn’t need them,” she said.

Dior’s high-jewelry collection presentation in Shanghai. Matjaz Tancic/WWD

Commenting on the abstract nature of the collection, which contrasts with some more figurative ones in the past, inspired by the architecture of Versailles or daisies drawn by Christian Dior, to give just two examples, de Castellane noted she enjoys exploring different styles.

“Some clients like figurative pieces while others like abstract ones,” she noted. “I like a mix. In life you can have different personalities, different desires depending on the moment — I find it’s important,” she said.

“There are some things I might love at a given time, but then I will look for change, and maybe come back again to the things I liked before,” she said.

Making jewelry helps to serve as an antidote to anxious times, suggested the designer.

“It allows people to dream a little,” she said.

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jessicakehoe · 5 years ago

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Why Prada/Miu Miu and Burberry Continuously Hire Perfumers Daniela Andrier and Francis Kurkdjian

Monogamous creative relationships are unusual in the perfume industry, where few perfumers enjoy in-house status at venerable houses. Masters like Christine Nagel (Hermès), Mathilde Laurent (Cartier), Olivier Polge (Chanel), François Demachy (Dior) and Thierry Wasser (Guerlain) are exceptions. Most perfumers work at one of the major raw materials companies (like Symrise, Firmenich, IFF or Givaudan) and compete against their peers to win a perfume brief, one gig at a time. Acclaimed perfumers Daniela Andrier and Francis Kurkdjian are rare exceptions who enjoy the best of both worlds: They get to define the olfactive signatures of a brand’s fragrance pillars, providing continuity as the scents evolve, and also refresh their creativity with other challenging projects.

Photography courtesy of Miu Miu

DANIELA ANDRIER

“I consider that my work is almost like I’m a translator and I have this language, which is an olfactive language, so if I understand the brand, I can translate it into a smell,” Daniela Andrier explains from her office at Givaudan. “With time that goes by, you understand better who you are and you know for whom you should work.” Over the past 30 years, she says, she has thrived the most in creative exchanges with a strong designer within a brand, whether the artistic sensibility is classical (like Tiffany & Co.) or postmodern—“for example, with Maison Martin Margiela, I did (Untitled), which was a beautiful adventure.”

The renowned nose has worked continuously with Prada’s co-CEO and fashion designer Miuccia Prada and been behind most of Miu Miu’s and Prada’s perfumes since 2003, from the ingredient-focused Les Infusions range and dynamic Luna Rossa colognes to the new Miu Miu Twist. “When I’m working with Mrs. Prada, there’s a mutual sympathy and a very silent correspondence; there is something that is just connected,” says Andrier.

“I’ve been thinking a lot about the work I’ve been doing for [Mrs. Prada] and why it is so different from everything else I’ve worked on, and I guess my conclusion is that I learned lots from just looking at her work,” she explains, referencing the designer’s penchant for unexpected juxtapositions of colour and material. “The perfumer I am today has been very much educated by her vision of femininity: its relation to the contemporary and the traditional, the brutal and the beautiful, the precious and the brittle, the ugly and the elegant—all these contradictions.”

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“It provokes the cinematic experience of a partially remembered dream” – our perfumer Daniela describes her creation, @Prada’s Purple Rain, one of the ten signature scents featured at the @somersethouse #Perfume exhibition in London. #perfumepioneers #Repost by @moniqueledoledec #perfume #somersethouse #fragrance #exhibition #perfumer #givaudanperfume #danielaandrier #prada #purplerain #iris #ingredients #perfumery

A post shared by Givaudan Perfume (@givaudanperfume) on Jun 27, 2017 at 9:02am PDT

Andrier says she was a customer first, captivated by the richness of the materials that shape Prada’s point of view. “The whole way it nurtures itself from history: movies, literature and the art of costume—all these references in the details on that coat or this skirt,” she says. The challenge is capturing the wit of memorable ready-to-wear collections—the soft, luminous whimsy of a fairy collection (Prada Spring 2008) of gossamer-silk pixies paired with hearty ribbed knitwear or the deshabille of a cardigan worn under a sundress (Prada Fall 2013)—in a fragrance.

“This way of putting things together translates, for me, into my work as a perfumer putting things together that maybe I otherwise would not have put together,” says Andrier. With Miu Miu Twist, there’s the intriguing interplay of an apple blossom turning a “pink amber accord” of burnt sugar into something fresh.

Andrier mentions that all of her Prada/Miu Miu products sit on a nearby shelf; I suggest that the flacons must now total more than 50. “I’ve never even counted them, but if I turn around, it’s like, wow, a lot,” she laughs. “I think I am more than anything very much like an in-house perfumer in my state of mind because I’m a monomaniac person—very obsessive in my way of loving and admiring.”

“I can be a bit of an uncompromising person—I have to work to keep it cool,” Andrier adds ruefully. “I’m better off working for brands that are looking for that kind of personality and want that. And [Mrs. Prada] does.” Take the confectionery of Prada Candy: “She gave very clear instructions,” Andrier said in an interview when the fragrance was launched. “A caramel but not half of a caramel. Uncompromised and daring.”

“I admire her a lot,” Andrier says now. “I’m happy to give my intransigence to her rather than to brands that don’t give a shit!” She pauses conspiratorially and then adds: “This is kind of a déclaration d’amour. If Mrs. Prada asked me tomorrow ‘Do you want to be my in-house perfumer?’ I would say ‘Of course.’ I would do it immediately.” But, she admits, “I’m not so sure I would do it for someone else, because that would mean I could no longer work for her.”

Photography courtesy of Burberry

FRANCIS KURKDJIAN

Competition against other perfumers is how Francis Kurkdjian, who also composes for the eponymous fragrance house he co-founded in 2009, lands gigs with clients like Carven and Elie Saab. And it was the same process even for his subsequent iterations of Le Male, his 1995 blockbuster for Jean Paul Gaultier. “Whether it’s a long-term working relationship or a one-off, the uncertainty is always there,” he says. That is, except for his ongoing work with Burberry.

“Over the years, you learn to find a vibration that fits with a brand” is how Kurkdjian puts it. Burberry’s fragrance creation has been almost exclusive to him for the past five years—even for the home fragrance collection, which, he points out, is unique.

In the beginning of his relationship with Burberry, Kurkdjian researched the history and fundamentals of British perfumery, which, even before the brand’s heritage and attitude come into play, distinguish it from American or French perfumery traditions.

“You build your own playground where you define lines,” explains Kurkdjian. “Defining limits is very difficult—it’s my job. But once you do, it’s very easy.”

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Bright and blossoming . Introducing Her Blossom, a new #Burberry fragrance inspired by springtime in London. A walk through sunshine-soaked city parks and down petal-covered paths . #BurberryBeauty #BurberryHerBlossom #BurberryHer

A post shared by Burberry (@burberry) on May 1, 2019 at 5:48am PDT

“The brands that work with me laugh and say that I’m a 360 perfumer because I always need to know and understand the where, when, what and why beyond the smell,” he says. “It’s not just what you want to create as a scent; it’s the meaning of the scent you want to create, which is not the same thing. You need more depth.” That’s not marketing positioning—it’s knowing where a brand or a company is within its own history.

During the creative process for Burberry Her, for example, the brand’s feminine scent launched last fall, Kurkdjian wasn’t aware of its name (most perfumers aren’t) but was able to intuit early on that it should be “more obviously feminine than My Burberry [his previous pillar for the house] and more joyful and playful.” For the forthcoming follow-up, Burberry Her Blossom, he pulled out elements of the tomboy sensuality with facets of plush plum and airy peony.

“Part of my vision was to have a rather masculine woman,” says Kurkdjian. “Things were not explained to me like that—with the idea of Cara [Delevingne] being the face—because at the very beginning, no one knows. But in the brief, I could feel that.”

Click below for more perfumers who create fragrant cohesion for designers and brands:

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