Dior Medallion Chair: Reinterpreted Icon
The icon that inspired Christian Dior to opt for the canning motives. Dior Medallion Chair is reinterpreted this year by 17 artists at the Salone del Mobile, in Milano.
Dior Medallion Chair: Inexhaustible Source of Inspiration
Present since the first Christian Dior show, the cannage is an ideal motif for the house of Dior — borrowed from Lady Dior jewellry, the iconic motif is actually inspired by a chair with a medallion-shaped backrest.
There were two crucial periods in the development of the Christian Dior aesthetics of the seat for the house — the XVIII century and the Belle Époque. If Dior borrows codes that have become iconic for the couture, notably the knot and the corolla line, it is on the backrest of Louis XVI’s chair that illuminates the relevance of the canning.
This chair was, in fact, a part of the outfit of the hotel at 30, Avenue Montaigne, organized in collaboration with a decorator and friend, Victor Grandpierre. The historic headquarters of the fashion house was, from the floor to the ceiling, the exact reflection of Dior. While the Montaigne Grey colours the walls with subtle elegance, the furniture highlights the panache of couture.
Even today, there are these chairs, called Medallion chairs, in great salons of the boutique, avenue Montaigne, and their canning has become irregular patterns here and there in Dior fashion. Initially intended for the guests of the Haute Couture shows, these chairs became a strong symbol of the house.
And it is the Medallion Chair that is central for the art project now under the initiative of the Dior House.
17 Art Visions For the Dior Chair
On the occasion of the Salon del Mobile in Milano, Dior invited 17 artists to reinterpret the Dior Medallion chair. Sam Baron, Nacho Carbonell, Pierre Charpin, Dimorestudio, Khaled El Mays, Martino Gamper, Constance Guisset, India Mahdavi, nendo, Joy de Rohan Chabot, Linde Freya Tangelder, Atang Tshikare, Seungjin Yang, Ma Yansong, Jinyeong Yeon, Tokujin Yoshioka, and Pierre Yovanovitch display their artistic sensibility in this icon of the French style.
“An unprecedented and plural collaboration, reflected by the untimely modernity of the House, prolongs and reinvents the Dior’s dream” as it puts the house.
“The Medallion chair of Louis XVI and 18th centuries, it is for me the apotheose of the French furniture, cabinetmakers made an iconic chair, covered with the Martin varnish which was a revolution at the time. It is simple, it is comfortable, it has become very popular, and, thanks to its curves, we reinvented it immediately,” confided one of these artists, Pierre Yovanovitch; behind the creation of Monsieur and Madame Dior chairs, the appearance of the emblematic oblique cloths.
These rooms, as well as other ones presented in the Palazzo Citterio in Milano, are “the hybrid products, mixing the tradition of the Dior House and the vision of the motives that I have developed for my collection,” as precisely noted by the Indian architect and designer Mahdavi.
The series is as sophisticated as inspired to be discovered at the Salone del Mobile, in Milan, until September 10, 2021.