Words: Janice Breen Burns, editor (jbb@voxfrock.com.au) Pictures: runway by Style.com
In a perfect world, this morning’s media soiree for Dior would have proceeded unimpeded by news of yet another loon terrorising innocents somewhere in the Outside World. But, this was today, December 15, 2014 and the loon was not in some far flung Middle Eastern outpost, but in Martin Place, Sydney. Sydney!
For all the gorgeousness of Dior’s glossy new Melbourne flagship the global trending hashtag #Sydneysiege (with a peak-load of 30,000 tweets per hour) was a crystalline countereality. I will never ever feel the same blase sense of safety I have felt all of my life in Australia, but I will also, never be more grateful for the heart-flutteringly lovely aspects of fashion that I encounter, and often report and write about, every day. Trivial? Schmivial.
Fashion is life. It’s freedom and beauty and complexity. Fashion’s rainbow of self expressions is a pivotal reason why people of certain political and religious persuasions loathe us. It is also a pivotal reason why, despite today’s Lindt cafe Loon and other blights on joy and laughter, I believe the world is still wonderful and always will be while Fashion and all her tandem disciplines have free creative reign…..
Dior’s first sparkly, creamy, silky freestanding Melbourne store is the latest in a string to be fitted out to American architect Peter Merino’s exacting standards. It has “rooms” in the style of a Parisien apartment, for accessories, leathergoods, ready-to-wear and shoes, with a little side-door for clients wont to slip in more discreetly for a Victoire de Castellane fine jewel or Dior timepiece exquisitry. (I don’t use the term “exquisitry” lightly.)
Grey, “because it is neither black, nor white” was a specialty of Monsieur Dior, and is exploited here to at least 55 shades, in silk wallskins, silk dropblinds, even silvery silk rugs. The effect is lush, without resort to gaudy. Mirrors, metal fittings and glossy counters provide the sparkle mentioned earlier and pale marble, the colour of whipped butter and etched with Dior’s signature “canage” pattern, the creaminess.
Staff are warm, friendly and perfectly perfect in black “uniforms” comprising contemporary versions of M. Dior’s classic bar jacket and flip skirt cut chic to the knee and teamed with dagger-toe flats. In sync with Dior stores around the globe, the racked and shelved collection they are selling is Cruise (including ensembles pictured) with pre-fall – shown last week in Tokyo with Raf Simon’s “Esprit Dior” heritage tribute exhibition – due early in the new year.
Dior, 206 Collins Street, Melbourne (in the former Chanel store site, tucked into the Westin bluestone driveway.)
