Matteo Garrone's short film for Dior's Couture 2021 collection

To interpret the atmosphere of Dior's Fall/Winter 2021 Haute Couture collection, presented on July 6th during Digital Fashion Week in Paris, Maria Grazia Chiuri of Dior invited the Italian director Matteo Garrone, author of films such as Gomorrah and Pinocchio, to make a short film called Le Mythe Dior: a silent journey through the beauty of clothes and the suggestions of classical mythology. The short film, which opens with the romantic image of the maison's seamstresses making miniaturized versions of the dresses, He follows two young porters as they lead the miniature models in front of different mythological creatures, jealously guarding them in a house for dolls: the images of the film evoke the dreamlike and fairy-tale aesthetic of The Tale of Tales, the film inspired by the fairy tales of Giambattista Basile that Garrone presented at the Cannes Film Festival in 2015.

The film, which lingers on the folds of clothes and the details of the packaging and celebrates its artisanal tradition, was inspired by the Théatre de la Mode: a miniature fashion touring theatre designed by the Chambre Syndicale de la Couture Parisienne after World War II to revive the industry, at the time devastated by the conflict. In 1945 its 237 figurines, all the size of a doll, made the rounds of European cities and the event was revived in the United States the following year. To showcase the new collection, Dior created two sets of 37 dresses, each reproduced at 40 percent of the original size. Chiuri explained:

“All the dresses are really couture dresses. We made them in the real proportions with the real textiles, with the real craftsmanship. It’s playful, but it’s real."

About Garrone's choice for the short film, which is his first experience in the field of fashion, Chiuri said:

"[Garrone] doesn’t know anything about fashion in general. I think that everybody has to reinvent their way of working. During the lockdown, I saw many articles about the digital world, but honestly, fashion is not only digital. It’s not something you can only see. You have to touch it, you have to see the craftsmanship, especially in couture"

Despite Chiuri's intentions to think outside the box and be "more radical", not everyone was enthusiastic about the short film: within hours of its release, Diet Prada lashed out at the maison denouncing a casting of exclusively white models. Similarly, Tim Blanks of Business of Fashion noted that the way the collection is presented in the film has nothing radical, but that on the contrary he wasted the opportunity to imagine a scenario that immersed itself in nature in all the "extraordinary, multi-faceted, perverse richness", as well as in its diversity.

The drastic measures imposed by the pandemic have forced the fashion world to reinvent itself completely. At this complex moment, Dior is one of the brands that is investing the most in its future: the presentation of the Haute Couture 2020/21 comes a few days after the opening of the pop-up store in Capri and just before the show with which on July 22nd will present the collection in Cruise in Lecce, without audience. As Pietro Beccari, President and CEO of the brand explained:

"Mr. Dior had the courage to launch his brand right after the war, an act of rebellion against the dark times. And I think I can say we are sufficiently resistant in this crisis to be optimistic about the future."