Paris (AFP)

"Dress like at home": in a first major post-confinement parade in Paris on Tuesday, Dior sharpened the senses of a masked public by offering them a protective cloakroom, in unison with the times.

In "small committee" with 300 guests, less than a third than usual for the meetings of the historic house, this highly anticipated parade after months of virtual presentations was also broadcast on the Tik Tok platform to reach millennials.

"It's a great emotion, we are living a very difficult time and resuming the shows is a positive sign that we can adapt to its difficulties," Dior artistic director Maria Grazia Chiuri told AFP.

The models in enveloping outfits evoking a chic sleepover evolved in a pavilion with black walls in the Tuileries Garden, lit by light installations, such as the stained glass windows of a Gothic cathedral, by the Italian artist Lucia Marcucci.

A high-pitched capella song from the Sequenza 9.3 ensemble.

expressing the grief of grieving women accompanied the parade.

At the time of the pandemic which radically changed lifestyles and habits of the body, it was necessary to "question" the concept of fashion and transform the silhouette.

- Privacy, intimate dress-

"People today want to protect themselves, an aspect that we have not taken into account before. We have a much more private lifestyle and our relationship with clothes will be much more personal and intimate," she emphasizes. .

"We have to feel good in it, it has to give us positive energy in the morning".

The quintessence of this reflection is the transformation of the iconic Dior bar jacket which emphasizes the delicacy of the waist and the softness of the shoulders.

It is a drawing by Christian Dior made in 1957 of a "overcoat", a jacket that we wore at home that guided the designer.

"The idea was to make a jacket in which one would feel good at home. We worked a lot on soft fabrics, or rustic ones like linens or knits," she explains.

Coiled in colorful overlays like Virginia Woolf or dressed in a white shirt like Susan Sontag: the looks of these intellectuals when they worked from home were another source of inspiration.

- Zoom in hat -

A men's shirt is reinvented as a tunic or shirt dress or worn over shorts or loose striped pants, evoking pajamas-style as well as large coats with cashmere and floral patterns.

The mottled fabrics of the French and Italian tradition are put together with the Indonesian ikats: "I like having a dialogue between these two worlds so distant and at the same time so close", underlines Maria Grazia Chiuri.

Shaded colors, the abundance of tie and dye contribute to this cozy atmosphere.

Loose, embroidered camouflage jackets play on a different level of protection.

Regarding the hat, the hatter of the house Stephen Jones imagined a headband with a veil, a "mix between the tastes of Maria Grazia" who likes more flexible things, scarves and headbands, and the classic Dior spirit, like colorful striped bobs to match clothes and book tote bags.

"If we can have a nice hat like that at a next zoom meeting, it will make everyone happy," he told AFP.

© 2020 AFP