If Dreams Were Couture

Celebrating the fashion houses 70th year, the Christian Dior: Designer of Dreams exhibit in Paris was a record-breaker, an inspiring curation, and for the fashion enthusiast, heavily intoxicating. Metros Randz Manucom retells the experience.

- Metro’s Randz Manucom

The setting: Paris, post-New Year’s Day this year. I had been waiting in line for two and a half hours by then, drenched by the stormy streets right outside Musée des Arts Décoratifs. It was the tail-end of the exhibition, down to its last few days, but up to full capacity. For an exhibition averaging a four-hour wait and having clocked in 700,000 visitors since July of 2017 (a 112-year record broken for the museum), I knew I had to jet off to Paris just for this.

By the numbers, the show is as grand as it can get: 70 years of Dior, their first Paris show in 30 years, over 300 dresses—all couture, 32,000 square feet of space. Yet, standing right in front of the opening dress at the entrance of the show, a Satan red, wool crepe dress from his first-ever collection—I felt small. The scene: 1947, post-war France—as some might say, at the looming dead end of fashion. But French fashion gave birth to a hero then: What Christian Dior did was to revolutionize femininity with an hour-glass ideal, the “New Look.” Right there at arm’s length was the cinched waist beauty that embraces a woman’s curves—no, celebrates being a woman, period.