Christian Dior’s iconic medallion chair continues to inspire designer Philippe Starck. After the “Miss Dior” chair last year, he has just presented at the Milan Furniture Fair the “Monsieur Dior” armchair, created in homage to the great French couturier.
A year ago, designer Philippe Starck presented the chair called Miss Dior during the Milan Furniture Fair (Italy), thus paying homage to Catherine Dior, resistance fighter, florist and sister of the great French couturier. This year, the French designer has this time presented the armchair Mr. Dior, with clean lines and in polished or lacquered aluminum, in homage to Christian Dior. This armchair “comes out of an eternal icon which is the icon of the French people, it is made of an unalterable material, we are in historical, cultural, sentimental and even ecological accuracy”declared Philippe Starck to AFP, on the sidelines of the Furniture Fair which is being held from April 18 to 23, 2023.
“There is, in Christian Dior, this perfect balance, both solid and subtle, between masculinity and femininity, which seems to be the secret of the longevity and importance of his work. This is how I see Monsieur Dior and that’s how I wanted to imagine this collection, ultra-technological and totally graceful”, explain Philippe Starck on the fashion house’s website.
It all started with the chair with an oval backrest in the form of a medallion created in 1769 by the French carpenter Louis Delanois. She has become the icon of Christian Dior’s haute couture brand. In his shop in Paris, the designer invited his guests to these medallion chairs upholstered in canework and toile de Jouy.
A “complementary” duo
With the chair Miss Dior and the chair Mr. Dior, the designer continues to reinvent the iconic Médaillon chair. “It was natural to enlarge the family. The chair Miss Dior Sweet and the chair Mr. Dior are thus perfectly balanced through these essential, existential notions, of gravity and lightness, from yin to yang. Miss Dior And Mr Dior, Catherine and Christian Dior, sister and brother, chair and armchair, is therefore the story of a sublime complementary duality”. reports Philippe Starck.
The duo was thus declined in ecru bouclé fabric or pink, black or fluorescent orange Toile de Jouy fabric. It is therefore a new collaboration between the 74-year-old designer and the haute couture house. Philippe Starck has also imagined a whole collection of furniture. The parts, made in Italy, include small stools, bistro tables, coffee tables, side tables and dining tables.
fashion and design
Christian Dior himself drew a parallel between haute couture and the world of design and architecture. “A dress is built and it is built according to the direction of the fabrics, it is the secret of couture and it is a secret which depends on the first architectural law: that of obedience to gravity”he declared in a conference in 1955. Yet for Philippe Starck, “design will never be fashion, it will never be a fashion product, it’s not at all the same durations” of use.
Dior is not the only haute couture house to enter the interior furniture market, like Armani, Fendi, Versace or Hermès. “The arrival of haute couture houses in the furniture industry, with their know-how, their talents, their power” makes it possible to attend creations “that we have never seen” before, according to Philippe Starck. The medallion chair has thus been revisited by sixteen other designers.