PARIS – Grab the black ensembles. Witch clothing is in vogue, according to fashionistas.
For the fourth year in a row, elements of stereotypical witches in popular culture have emerged on the runways. Ahead of Paris Fashion Week 2023 and the unveiling of the Dior presentation, the Creative Director of Dior Beauty, Peter Phillips, summed up the Spring/Summer 2024 runway show with two words: “witchy lips.”
Two years ago, fashion luxury brand Dior explored the intersection of trot and fashion in their 2021 Spring collection with a 15-minute film titled Le Château du Tarot. As we noted then, the cards and their imagery will be comfortable and familiar to The Wild Hunt’s readership. The design of the clothing was led by Italian fashion designer Maria Grazia Chiuri, who has been the creative director at Christian Dior SE. She has led the fashion house since 2016 and is the first woman to lead the creative side of Dior in its history.
Under Chiuri, Dior’s 2023 collection is a look at female stereotypes throughout history, from witches to the Parisiennes of 19th-century France. She explains that her thought process behind the design of the clothing was both a reflection of the historical Dior collection and a feminist re-envisioning of the fashion.
“When I look at the images of Mr. Dior’s work, I remind myself that they were done probably with a male gaze,” Chiuri commented to Vogue. “I want to translate this with a view that’s more contemporary.
“It’s a reflection upon imagery and how much it affects our ideas of things,” she said.
Exploring that notion, she looked to female stereotypes of history: unconventional women, who were deemed dark or dangerous, from the witches of the Middle Ages to the Parisiennes of 19th-century France. “It’s the idea of transformation,” Chiuri added noting that the transformation is about her work at Dior.
She did not want “to reproduce another stereotypical idea” as she re-imagined some of the classics of the Dior collection. She wanted to add supernatural elements, plastering her mood board with images of Ingrid Bergman as Joan of Arc, Maria Callas as Medea, Simone Signoret appearing in a film adaptation of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible.
Not everyone agreed. Several commented that Dior has become repetitive, asking, “Where is the magic?”
There were also social statements made during the show to highlight a growing conservativism in the world. Guest artist Elena Bellatoni, who created the show space, added to Dior’s spring collection by highlighting the impact of late-stage capitalism, sexist advertising and its damage on women.
“I’m very, very worried,” she said as she considered the politics in America, Iran, Italy, and elsewhere. “Artists help me. Without their voices, this would be impossible for me. It’s important to have a strong community of artists around you.”
Bellatoni added bright pink and yellow walls with slogans such as “NOT HER,” “CAPITALISM WON’T TAKE HER WHERE SHE REALLY WANTS TO GO,” and “YOUR BODY IS POETIC YOUR BODY IS POLITICAL.”
“My position is NOT HER, the statement that has become the thread that guides and binds all my work and installations, images and writings alike,” said Bellatoni. “NOT HER is an image in itself, a response to the dominant stereotype: it’s not her, she’s no longer all that.”
She wanted to highlight the social changes empowering women over the last 50 years and the political climate. “I’m free to choose,” she said. “Unlike my mother, I have a choice.”
Dior is not the only fashion designer to look at clothing with touches of witchcraft and Pagan elements. Others were more decisive in their associations with Pagan images than Dior’s echoes of witchy elements.
Earlier this year, London designers Paolina Russo and Lucille Guilmard made a splash at Copenhagen Fashion Week just after Lughnasadh, which itself was highlighted at the event. They highlighted TikTok-coined “#whimsigoth” and elements in their designs in a collection titled “Monoliths” that draws upon dolmens, triskelions, natural design, and other imagery familiar to Pagans, Witches, and Heathens.
“We were trying to draw a line between these symbols and markers that humans have been making for thousands of years, and [see] how we can draw similarities between the things that we make in the now. Drawing on pavement as a kid and making these symbols on your driveway is almost the same as people making symbols in caves,” Russo said.
Guilmard added the Pagan imagery added to an understanding of the natural world. She said much of it is “actually a language of explaining what was happening in [the ancestors’] day; and that was happening all around the world. Those people were not traveling, but they were all drawing the same thing. So there was sort of like a collective consciousness that was happening. They were all sort of connected without knowing each other, [through] a language of drawing, you know?”
The designers note that these images are also the language of a new generation of free spirits who revere nature. Russo and Guilmard were awarded the Zalando Visionary Award which honors creativity and design, social impact, and innovation.
Chirui summed up the interest in her fashion house: “It’s the dark side of Dior!”
Let’s take it – just in time for October and Pagan wardrobes.
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