There are few Parisian fashion houses as synonymous with the U.S. as Dior. In 2021, “Christian Dior: Designer of Dreams” journeyed to Brooklyn after stints at the V&A and Musée des Arts Décoratifs. The show chronicled the rise of Dior since Harper’s Bazaar editor and through-and-through New Yorker Carmel Snow christened the designer’s New Look as such. From there, Dior became a fast favorite of Americans from New York to San Francisco, as documented in the de Young museum’s ongoing exhibition “Fashioning San Francisco.” The show even displays two archival couture gowns that Dior sent to the city’s department store I. Magnin & Company to jumpstart San Francisco’s fashion economy in the aftermath of World War II.
Fast forward a couple years and now the fashion house has become especially close with the Brooklyn Museum. For two years in a row, Dior has been a major sponsor of the museum’s spring Artist Ball gala. This year’s event was held last week and honored Titus Kaphar. Art-world luminaries Marina Abramović, Kehinde Wiley, and Mickalene Thomas were among those who joined Dior creative director Maria Grazia Chiuri at the event, which has raised more than $3 million since it took place last Tuesday. The creative director has been on a whirlwind tour of New York in the past couple of weeks: in addition to the Artists Ball, she was an honoree of Project for Empty Space’s Badass ArtWomen Awards, and while she was not present at the New Museum Gala, its benefit auction of Thomas’s Dior Lady Art 8 bag fetched an eye-watering sum.
