From April 11 to 22, the exhibition “Dior: The Art of Color” is running at the So-Cal Link Gallery Omotesando in Tokyo. With photographs and films featuring the beauty looks by Serge Lutens, Tyen and Peter Philips, it invites visitors to discover or rediscover the House’s deep roots in color.
Beginning 1949 with the first Rouge Dior smiles, Dior beauty has been all about an embrace of color. It’s this makeup story that this traveling exhibition traces, in the manner of a chromatic voyage through twelve shades. Visitors are plunged into the worlds of the three Creative Directors who have successively headed Dior makeup.
Blue is one of the colors on show. Suggesting calm and tranquility, it was one of Christian Dior’s favorites: “Only navy blue can ever compete with black, it has all the same qualities,” the founder wrote in his Little Dictionary of Fashion. This color structures and distinguishes the model’s face, recalling a portrait by Fernand Léger, in a creation by Serge Lutyens from 1972.
Pink, “the sweetest of colors” according to Christian Dior, also gets the star treatment. Whether pastel, powdered or fuchsia, it translates the glorified femininity Tyen expresses in the photograph Splendid Plumage from 1988. The full spectrum of this nuanced art is to be found in the book Dior: The Art of Color, published by Rizzoli.
