Maria Grazia Chiuri called upon the Ukrainian artist Olesia Trofymenko for a Dior haute couture collection that drew on folk costume to form connections across borders. “She gave the reference of the tree of life, a symbol I like a lot. It represents the circle of life. I think that’s important in this moment in time because we constantly have to change the way we work and build bridges between different knowledge and savoir-faire,” the designer said before her show, the set of which was framed in walls covered in massive embroideries by Trofymenko. Her tree of life motifs entered into the collection by way of intricate embroideries realised by the Chanakya School of Craft in India. They were presented in symbiosis with folkloric cloths – turned into dramatic volumes – from a broad array of cultures, in an effort to show that regional dress has often drawn on the same language to create something communal and unique. For Chiuri, it was an illustration of unity through diversity, and the connections we all share in a time when that’s easy to forget.

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