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For many years, Isabella Ducrot has obsessed over crosswise threads. In 2018, she looked more closely at how wefts figured in Simone Martini’s Annunciation, a 1333 painting that hangs in the Uffizi in Florence, fixating on how the detailing, despite being so meticulously placed, seemed to be largely ignored by historians.
The resulting paintings that the artist produces have appeared in gallery shows in New York, Cologne, and Berlin, and now, they’ve been brought to the runway, courtesy of Dior. The house’s creative director, Maria Grazia Chiuri, has tried to update the French house’s identity by cozying up to women artists whose work takes an interest in style. That makes this 93-year-old, Naples-based artist a natural fit.
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Though it was only recently that Ducrot, late in life, was discovered by Galerie Giselle Capitain, she was not foreign to some of the art world’s upper crust. An acquaintance of Cy Twombly and Italian designer Federico Forquet, her marriage to an Italian tour operator afforded her years of travel to parts of the Middle East and Asia, where an interest in textiles with origins in the East started to unfold.
Backstage, Chiuri said that what drew her to Ducrot were Italian artists’ references to Ottoman royal dress, garb that exaggerates and distorts the size of its wearers.
For Dior’s show in Paris, Ducrot was enlisted as the show’s scenographer, creating a checkered backdrop featuring oversized dresses reminiscent of pre-modern eras. In pre-show notes, Chiuri said that alongside Ducrot, she considered unpacking the “insoluble” relationship “between the body and dress.”
Unveiling the latest collection at the Musée Rodin, Chiuri’s latest designs revisited a 70-year-old Dior prototype known as “La Cigale.” This dress, originating in 1952, was crafted from moiré, a silky fabric that Vogue once said gives garments the appearance of being forged from heavy metal.
Chiuri’s vision seemed to mimic aspects of Ducrot’s approach, treating a dress as an architectural element. On Monday, black floor-length dresses were intentionally scaled up and structured to give an illusion of having weight; two-piece sets in grey exuded a sheen almost reminiscent of chrome, while ensembles comprised of feathers looked more animalistic than delicate.
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