- JOELLE DIDERICH
Dior Documentary Goes Behind the Scenes of Athens Cruise Show
Greek director Marianna Economou documents the artisans who collaborated with Maria Grazia Chiuri on the collection.
Dior Resort 2022GIOVANNI GIANNONI/WWD
GREECE IS THE WORD: Who better than a Greek director to document Maria Grazia Chiuri’s collaboration with local artisans on her cruise 2022 women’s collection?
The Dior designer stayed true to her tradition of promoting female imagemakers by giving Athenian filmmaker Marianna Economou carte blanche to capture the making of the collection in a documentary, titled “The Greek Bar Jacket.”
The film shows how Chiuri worked with tailors, weavers and artists to develop her cruise line, which melded goddess gowns with athletic staples. The spectacular display at the Panathenaic Stadium in Athens in June marked the first major runway show with an audience since the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic.
The poster for “The Greek Bar Jacket” documentary.COURTESY OF DIOR
Economou, who caught Chiuri’s eye through her 2019 documentary “When Tomatoes Met Wagner,” met with each of the artisans involved in the show.
Traveling across the country, the director visited the workshop of tailor Aristeidis Tzonevrakis, who reinterpreted Dior’s iconic Bar jacket by embellishing it with traditional chainstitch embroidery, and the Silk Line factory run by Kostas Mouhtaridis and Dimitra Kolotoura, which produced fabrics in the house’s signature stripe and hound’s tooth motifs using a traditional weaving technique.
On the island of Thasos, Economou met artist Christiana Soulou, whose drawings of female figures from mythology were transposed onto cut-yarn jacquard dresses. In Athens, she discovered the family-run Atelier Tsalavoutas, which makes traditional fishermen’s caps.
“The Greek Bar Jacket” will premiere on Dior’s YouTube channel on Thursday at 4 p.m. CET.