On with the shows! The metaphor of the circus has such a history in fashion—the performance, the costumes, the glitter, the constant traveling. Maria Grazia Chiuri immersed herself in research for her Spring haute couture show—circus depictions in Jean Cocteau, Pablo Picasso, Cindy Sherman, and Richard Avedon’s Dovima with Elephants, which he shot in Paris’s Cirque d’Hiver circa 1955. Chiuri also came across intensely hand-sequined costumes made by Gérard Vicaire, who has recently died: “He had a workshop here in Paris. It was all hand-embroidered—it’s really couture!”
You have to hand it to her. When it comes to booking acts for her shows, Chiuri is one of the sharpest-eyed impresarios in the ring. The designer, who made her entrance in ready-to-wear at Dior with her We Should All Be Feminists slogan T-shirts, performed the breathtaking leap of inviting Mimbre, London’s all-women troupe of circus acrobats, to do their astonishing thing in the Dior big top at the Musée Rodin.
Women stood on other women’s shoulders. They strode along the walkways, held high and visible from every angle, breaking gender barriers and breaking hearts with the symbolism of so much female support: She ain’t heavy—she’s my sister. . . . Chiuri is brilliant at pulling off these contemporary performance stunts: She did it by bringing in the Tel Aviv–based choreographer Sharon Eyal and members of her company for Spring 2019, and an eight-woman band of female rodeo stars from Mexico for Resort 2019. This one was the most powerfully central to her beliefs to date.
The clothes in the ring can’t be the sideshow, though; this is the conundrum for all the designers who are engaged in the high-wire act of providing immersive fashion experiences today. Oddly enough, though pretty and cute, it wasn’t the glittery, fragile fantasia of girls in tiny playsuits and body stockings that stood out, nor the on-brand assortment of semitransparent caged crinoline gowns. The stars of this show were the female ringmasters: everything Chiuri had developed in black and white, from greatcoats and cutaway tailcoats, to the details of band-boy frogging, right through to a wholly tailored ivory satin three-piece suit.
