This week marks the start of the Couture Fashion Week schedule, but, of course, these aren’t the couture shows as we know them. With usual catwalk shows currently held off due to social-distancing, not to mention ateliers having been closed due to the pandemic lockdown, designers were forced to think outside the box when showcasing their couture fashion this season. Well, Dior found a very creative solution. The French company presented its autumn/winter 2020 haute couture collection in the form of a beautiful fashion film, Le Mythe Dior. You can watch the film below:

In an interview with Harper’s Bazaar, Dior artistic director Maria Grazia Chiuri spoke on the project. Chiuri said: “We started working on this collection during the lockdown. Therefore we knew we couldn’t do a real show, so it was very clear from the start that my reference had to be tied to the dream or fantasy world.” The final product, Le Mythe Dior, which was directed by Italian filmmaker Matteo Garrone, follows the journey of a trunk filled with miniature scaled versions of full-size couture dresses. While in the forest, the trunk is discovered by a group of woodland nymphs, who later on wear the full-sized version of the pieces.

The film also pays homage to the Théâtre de la Mode – a 1945 traveling exhibit of small-scale fashion mannequins during World War II, which saw artists and designers collaborating to create something inspiring and beautiful during a difficult time. “These dolls were then shipped all over the world and the idea was to promote the idea that French haute couture was very much still alive,” she explains. So, with that in mind, given the extraordinary circumstances in which the collection was created, “the idea at the base of it all [for this Dior film] was to try and create a real collection but as a scale model.” What do you think of the film? And the collection?