By Vanessa Lee
Baby Dior's Spring/Summer collection transports us to a place of luxury and refinement that was particularly close to Christian Dior’s heart, and today still remains closely connected to the House: the Palace of Versailles.
For the Spring pieces, the flowerbeds of the Versailles gardens designed by Le Nôtre form the inspiration for a graphic wardrobe.
On a peplum top, an optical print evokes the mass plantings, while other pieces with laser cuts-outs have fresh new volumes.
The Hall of Mirrors are reinterpreted by materials with precious shimmers.
A dress of metallic techno jacquard or lurex arabesques for her; a cardigan structured with a silvered band and a mirror-print shirt for him.
The elegance of 18th-century women's fashion is reinvented, transposed into dresses, jackets and modern floral tops, with raspberry silk alongside technical fabrics, and printed or embroidered dresses worn under a plastic coat.
For the Summer pieces, the Baby Dior wardrobe explores an intimate Versailles – that of Marie-Antoinette and the Petit Trianon, her private domain.
The romantic and bucolic world of the young queen comes through in brightly-colored chiffon dresses, while the prints on other pieces reference the decorative motifs of Japanese flowers that adorned her apartments.