For the Fall 2023 collection Maria Grazia Chiuri worked together with the Chanakya School of Craft. A non-profit organization based in Byculla, founded by Monica Shah and Karishma Swali in 2016, where more than 700 women embroider. It is part of the embroidery house Chanakya Atelier.
The first thing that came to mind is, is that Maria Grazia has always find feminism very important and uses this a lot in her Dior collections. If it’s not literally visible in the clothes, it’s in who she collaborates with. And in this short documentary, she shows first the women that are learning embroidery and by doing the show in Mumbai inspires them also a lot. Maria Grazia tries to shed light on the technique, the hard work, the time that’s put into this, but also the joy that these women have for the embroidery and the work. I think that alone makes this a very nice collection already.
What I enjoyed about this documentary, is that they didn’t only talk about the collection, but first showed the school and the students that are practicing the embroidery. It looks like a space where you get a lot of freedom to explore different techniques after you learned the basis techniques. You can feel that it’s a focused and joyful environment. In the atelier space there is a lot of different techniques shown. When they show a close up, you only then realize how much patience and focus this takes. There goes a lot of details into this, that you maybe won’t be able to see on the runway.
Some techniques also have a more spiritual background. For example, the little mirrors they use in the embroidered fabrics. It symbolizes an evil eye, it reflects and ward off evil, it can reflect the good energies that the maker shares with the viewer.
You can really tell from the documentary that the designer Maria Grazia worked very closely with the atelier in India. They understand each other Maria appreciates the work. The specific colors that are used like the rani pink, jamuni, purple and yellow gold, getting the essentials of what represents India in colors, fabrics and technique.
In the documentary they name a woman Krishna Riboud, she was the first woman to introduce Indian fabrics in Paris. This part in the documentary also tells that India was more ahead in how they made their textiles. It says: ‘it offered properties that the medieval European textiles did not have, lightness and flexibility etc., as well as the capacity to absorb dyes well.’
There is also an explanation about the Sari, that Maria Grazia also took inspiration from. They talk about how it can be worn in different styles, like that you can wear it tight like a pair of pantaloons. The Sari and the wearing style belonged to a region, and the design directory also belonged to a region. There are variations in which way the end piece can be folded or worn flat. For Maria Grazia this references back to the Greco-roman traditions. The way they would drape the fabric around their body.
What for me is also important when I design is that the model feels nice in the clothes. In the end of the documentary, the models give positive comments about the clothes and that it relates for them to what they are used to and that it reflects Indian culture.