The Lady Dior bag is a concentrate of the couture of the house of Dior, with its charms, its exquisite leather, and its caning. The Lady Dior bag is the most sought-after of the designer bags. And its actuality, like its history, can be discovered here.
The Lady Dior Bag, Diana and Lady Di: A Timeless Bag
If the Lady Dior bag from Christian Dior is such an iconic bag, it’s because it fits in with the times. And it has been doing so since 1994.
If you look closely, with each collection, whether it is orchestrated by John Galliano, Raf Simons or Maria Grazia Chuiri… The Lady Dior bag adapts with elegance and ease to the vision of each artistic director.
Arty and gangly under John Galliano. Spearheaded by Raf Simons’ colourful and avant-garde fashion. The Lady Dior bag was recently the subject of an original and resolutely inspired version for the Dior Croisière 2022 collection held in Seville.
The Lady Dior bag was then masterfully crafted, embroidered with delicate gold embroidery by the Jesus Rosado workshop – a workshop that works only with gold and silver threads, mainly on fabrics that adorn the Madonnas during religious processions.
For the Autumn/Winter 2022 collection, Maria Grazia Chuiri cut it from a new fabric – a sort of counterpoint to the deconstructed collection she showed at Paris Fashion Week in February 2022. Cut in a daring leather, the Lady Dior then revealed its futuristic face in a now legendary caning. A model available here, with a shoulder strap.
The History of the Dior Bag: Icons Among Women’s Luxury Bags
1994. A new addition to the Dior leather goods repertoire – internally, it was named Chouchou. In 1995, the press kit of the Parisian house announced: “Lady, Lady Di, Lady Dior”. What happened in the meantime?
Diana Spencer, Princess of Wales, went to Paris to attend the opening of the Cézanne exhibition at the Grand Palais in 1995. Bernadette Chirac, then First Lady, asked Christian Dior for advice on how to give her guest a gift… She looked through the luxury bags and…
On that day in 1995, seen in the hands of Lady Di, the Dior bag was literally enthroned. Henceforth called Lady Dior, transcended by the grace of a Lady Di with an infallible reputation, it sold 100,000 Dior bags that year alone.
In this slight play on words, where the muse is stated without being, Lady Diana is like a name that has been removed.
This bag looks like it was designed by the master himself. The Lady Dior’s high technicality is a complete departure from the surrounding minimalism of the 90s. Its caning makes it a pure Dior product — its leather a product of French fashion excellence.
An Iconic Christian Dior Couture Bag
But if the bag has become so iconic, it is because the piece borrows many of its gimmicks from the already iconic vocabulary of the House of Dior.
First of all, there is the hand-carried style – a very couture approach initiated, if not invented, by Christian Dior. An ideal hand-carry for the modern woman, quickly completed by a shoulder strap cut from the same perfect leather.
Then comes its audacious character, breaking with the codes of the time. Just as it did in the post-war period by giving women the look of a flower woman, Dior initiated with Chouchou a real revolution in the look of handbags – shoulder bags and satchels were then legion.
The Lady Dior Manufacturing Process: An Exceptional Product
Chouchou also exudes all the elegance and refinement of 30 Avenue Montaigne. Its cane stitching, the very signature of Christian Dior, is made up of a network of oblique and perpendicular seams. Its hoop-shaped handle, a symbol of feminine gesture, gives the piece its couture gesture, while the charms that adorn it magnificently spell out the four letters that still make the world dream. D.I.O.R.
No less than 130 pieces of leather are needed to make this couture miracle… Like a made-to-measure set of jewellery, these different pieces are assembled around a mould. For greater precision, the sides are glued together and then sewn with a pillar stitcher.
Nothing is left to chance. The eyelets are pressed and then adjusted to be perfectly horizontal. As the handles are heavy, reinforcements between the two layers of leather structure the bag so that it does not sag. Finally, the eighth (a nod to Christian Dior) and last craftsman ensures that the object is perfect: 1 to 2% of the bags do not pass this test. It therefore takes nine hours, including the time it takes for the leather and canvas to dry, to create the Lady Dior.
Lady Dior, A Bag as an Object of Art
Lady Dior is so pure that it is a very easy canvas to reinvent. In 2014, the canvas was adorned with the mythical Dior leopard. Very quickly, the iconic toile de Jouy gave it an even more Dior dimension!
In November 2016, at Art Basel Miami, Christian Dior introduced the Lady Art project. The plot ? An iconic bag revisited by renowned artists.
Fine art has long been at the heart of Dior’s creation – even in Monsieur’s time, many of his friends were among the most influential artists of their time. Names such as Max Ernst, Alexander Calder, Alberto Giacometti and Pablo Picasso were exhibited in Christian Dior’s gallery.
It is this heritage that Maria Grazia Chiuri is now reworking. With contemporary artists such as Hong Hao, Friedrich Kunath, Jamilla Okubo, Spencer Sweeney and Daniel Gordon, Lady Dior is completing its status as a fashion legend.
Hypnotic, perforated, graphic, conceptual, voluminous, romantic, in embossed velvet and lambskin clouds… The Lady Dior lends itself to all kinds of audacity!
The iconic Dior bag is available in all sizes and formats, and in an infinite variety of styles. Mini, medium, micro, clutch, wallet…
In white, black, Gris Montaigne, pink, houndstooth… It is also a bag that is often reinterpreted during the Diorivieracollections by Christian Dior.
The Lady Dior bag model from the Dioriviera 2022 capsule collection is thus revealed in a tender, Mediterranean-style toile de Jouy. With its chic shoulder strap, the Lady Dior is the icon of luxury bags.
A perfect bag: refined, timeless and a perfect investment. A price range that can go from 3 000€ to 15 000€ or even more for the rarest ones!