Over the five years that Judy Chicago collaborated with the international fashion house, Dior, she has done numerous projects, starting with The Female Divine, her monumental set design for Maria Grazia Chiuri’s Spring Summer 2020 Haute Couture show, which was staged behind the Rodin Museum in Paris and involved the realization of Chicago’s long-held concept for a monumental goddess figure. The show was held inside the body of the goddess and the catwalk featured a large carpet based on her ‘mille fleurs’ design for the Eleanor of Aquitaine runner design from The Dinner Party (her best-known work now permanently housed at The Brooklyn Museum). Chicago also designed a series of banners in both French and English that posed a series of questions around the main query; What If Women Ruled The World?
In addition to these banners being exhibited at several museums, they became the basis for an international project with DMINTI, a Web3 organization that supports artists’ projects. At this point, the quilt that grew out of the project (both physical and digital) has traveled to multiple countries, and the questions Chicago raised have been answered by thousands of people worldwide. Chicago also designed special plates and three purses that taught women’s history, and most recently, a perfume box honoring Catherine Dior, the unknown sister of Christian, who devoted much of her life to promoting his legacy. Chicago’s work with Dior was based on her curiosity about whether art could have any real place in the fashion world. The answer seemed to be that it was possible to infuse the world of fashion with a similar level of meaning that has characterized her six decades as an artist.
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