The Indian artist Rithika Merchant designed the set for the Haute Couture Spring 2025 of the fashion house Dior. The textile works that compose it were designed by the Chanakya workshops and Chanakya School of Craft.
Who is Rithika Merchant?
Rithika Merchant was born in 1986 in Bombay (Mumbai), India. She obtained a BFA in Visual Arts from the Parsons School of Design in New York. She has already collaborated with the fashion world in the past, primarily with the French brand Chloé. For this reason, she was awarded the Vogue India Young Achiever of the Year Award at the Women of the Year Awards 2018, as well as being named one of the 100 creative voices of Vogue Magazine VogueWorld. The painting “Saudade” won the Sovereign Asian Art Prize 2021. In 2021, she won Le Prix DDessin Paris. She is represented by the Galerie LJ, located in the heart of the Ville Lumière, in the Marais, and by TARQ (Mumbai).
https://www.instagram.com/rithikamerchant
The research of Rithika Merchant
The world of Rithika is characterized by soft, wavy lines that encompass both light and dark colors. She uses a blend of watercolor and gouache, appreciating their translucent effect. The shades have been transposed into the embroideries by intertwining two different colors. Particular attention was paid to the transparency of the water. The storytelling begins with her Indian childhood, lived in Kerala on the tropical Malabar coast. Vine leaves and palms appear, a coffee tree, fleshy flowers. Hybrid creatures occupy the space alongside lions, bulls, and other existing animals. Some figures pass a comb through their mane of spikes; others display a large monocle instead of a breast; still, others flaunt heads and beaks of birds.
9 panels for 9 stories that introduce us to a dreamy non-place. We are children spying on magical scenes, hidden among blades of grass over a meter high. A swarm of curious eyes. These are shared experiences, female figures supporting one another.
Maria Grazia Chiuri and the partnership with art
Maria Grazia Chiuri (Rome, February 2, 1964) is the creator of this successful fusion between the world of art and fashion. Successful because the ignition of talented female artists in the world of fashion brings talented artists to the attention of the general public. Similarly, in my opinion, the brand’s prominence brings to the forefront the names of these creatives chosen by Dior’s favorite. Chiuri, a graduate of IED in Rome, is a highly sought-after figure. Rumor has it that she will soon take the creative reins of the Women’s prêt-à-porter department at Fendi.
Returning to the house of Christian Dior, other female artists have been called upon by Chiuri over the years. In particular, the artist who conceived the set design for Dior in 2023 is now in the spotlight. She is the nonagenarian Isabelle Ducrot (Naples, 1931) who has exhibited at the Venice Biennale and is known internationally also thanks to the Cologne gallerist Gisela Capitain who noticed her in 2019.
The fashion shows for Dior conceived by Maria Grazia Chiuri, in reverse
For the Haute Couture Spring Summer 2022 show, Maria Grazie Chiuri involved the Indian artist couple Madhvi and Manu Parek. Similarly, Anna Paparatti designed the set for the ready-to-wear Women’s Spring Summer 2022.
The Women’s Fall/Winter 2021 show was held in an exceptional location. The models walked in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles among the works of Silvia Giambrone. Mirrors covered with wax with thorns embedded. Each one is three and a half meters high, weighing 400 kilos. The immersive installation, curated by Paola Ugolini, is titled The Gallery of Shadows. Silvia Giambrone works with the Richard Saltoun Gallery (London, Rome). The latter has the mission to support female artists whose work has not been adequately represented in the past by the artistic ecosystem and the market. Even earlier, not by chance, the subversive art of Tomaso Binga, the stage name for Bianca Pucciarelli Menna, made its mark. In 2019, at the Musée Rodin, the runway was revolutionized by a work by Binga. It is the monumental reworking of Alfabeto Murale from 1976 (value 130,000 euros).
The luxury brand thus supports both creatives with a poetics linked to feminism and initiatives on “art and feminism”. The demonstration was the sponsorship of the exhibitions Il soggetto imprevisto. 1978. Arte e Femminismo in Italia, curated by Raffaella Perna and Marco Scotini, at FM Centro per l’Arte Contemporanea /Frigoriferi Milanesi in 2019; Io Dico Io / I Say I curated by Cecilia Canziani, Lara Conte, and Paola Ugolini at the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna in Rome in 2021.
The parade at the Rodin Museum evokes Wonderland
If Chanel, to celebrate its 110 years, took place in the Grand Palais in Paris, Dior chose the Musée Rodin.
The collection was inspired by Lewis Carroll’s masterpiece Alice in Wonderland. Furthermore, it is nourished by references to the works of surrealists Leonor Fini and Dorothea Tanning. Artists currently in the spotlight, given the major exhibition on Surrealism at the Centre Pompidou and the sales at Art Basel Paris 2024.
Chiuri presented contemporary reinterpretations of classic dresses like the Trapèze line, designed by the young Yves Saint Laurent, the new creative director of the Christian Dior maison. It also evokes the Cigale silhouette, created by Monsieur Dior for the Haute Couture Autumn-Winter 1952-1953 collection.
Nostalgic rococo notes are found in balloon skirts full of drapes, lace knickerbockers, and puffed sleeves. Corsets, crinolines, and tailcoats contour the body, while feather plumes and crests crown the head. The laces of gladiator sandals rise from the ankles along the length of the legs. The play of transparencies, on the other hand, contributes both to revealing and liberating the female forms and to highlighting the kaleidoscope of colors of the stage designed by Rithika Merchant. Chiuri’s idea is to look at the world of childhood – tulle and lace culottes – and the relationship with nature, as evident in the cape covered with petals.
She has collaborated for many years with art magazines such as Artribune, XIBT Contemporary, ArtApp, Insideart and Espoarte, preferring contemporary art in its many facets and media drifts.
