I’m not a ‘J’Adore Dior’ gal…. not the perfume…just the brand itself. Of course, there’s much to admire about the artistry of this Paris haute couture house, but I tend to find the clothes, the shows quite alienating and a little far-removed from my own fashionscape. Something to coo over on a various blogs/forums as though it were a magical land far far away.
So a Dior exhibition in Beijing is perfectly up my alley because it asserts that far-removed bubble that Dior is contained in for me and I can go on viewing the brand as something quite distant and dare I say cold. If the clothes seem untouchable to me, then Quentin Shih, one of the twenty artists chosen to reinterpret Dior, and his photographs of Dior haute couture in glass boxes set in "typical" cliched Beijing settings with stereotyped Beijing characters reaffirms this notion.
Sadly these are only titchy screencaps which don’t enlarge that much but the portfolio is a stunning one that I’m sure people who saw the exhibition in Beijing would appreciate even more…
The exhibition also has actual Dior dresses in glass, neon-lit boxes… ok, they do seem a wee bit more touchable here… still, it’s all a bit boxed-in for me… as I said, Dior will remain at that very top of the pyramid… and I’m not even all that bothered to go about clambering up to the top to reach it. Admiring from afar wearing my own scuzzier clothing has its benefits afterall…
**EDIT** I wrote this in haste so my wording was a little off. I did not mean to say that the scenes depicted in the photographs are typical of Beijing… That’s why I put typical in " " commas as if making a finger gesture. I did mean to say stereotyped and somewhat cliched. With regards to how they are viewed by Westerners I personally feel that most semi educated people will realise that there are in fact cliches, they’re literal and almost cartoonish-pop in their execution… and are in no way real depictions of Beijing…. most of us should know post-Olympics that there is nothing remotely dull/delapidated/cold about the city! They act as a sharp contrast to the dresses in the boxes and that is all…as opposed to any intentions of realist depiction…that’s how I’d see it anyhow…
(Photos from Mr Brooks’ Flickr)