#IndiaInFashion | Chanakya International continues its tryst of artisanal collaboration with Dior at Paris Couture Week

It was a joyful occasion for us as we came together with Dior, Maria Grazia Chiuri, and the artist Marta Roberti to unveil our collaboration for the Dior Couture Fall-Winter 2024 presentation in Paris. To witness this larger-than-life installation in person reinforces my belief that handcraftsmanship truly does embrace all—from memory, to magic, mysticism, identity, and tradition.

 
We worked closely with my dear friend and mentor, Maria Grazia Chiuri, artistic director of Dior’s Women’s Collection, and created an immersive experience that reflected our collective vision for the preservation of craft. Throughout our 25-year journey, Maria Grazia has been a true champion for craft excellence, fostering and preserving indigenous master techniques from around the world. It was an honour to continue this creative dialogue with these large-scale art installations dedicated to self-expression and told through the language of craft and the virtuosity of savoir-faire.

We had the pleasure of collaborating with Marta Roberti, an artist we deeply admire. Marta Roberti is a multidisciplinary artist best known for her figural representations that bear the influence of surrealism. In her work, she explores the relationship between humans, animals, and the plant world. When I first discovered her work, I noticed the usage of Yunnan paper that lends itself to a certain transparency, resulting in imagery that is fragile, ethereal, and captivating. For the Dior Haute Couture presentation, Marta’s delicate and powerful tribute to goddesses of the ancient world such as Potnia Theròn, Isis, and Shitala Mata was reimagined by our team and conceived using hand-embroidery techniques that further enhanced the diaphanous nature of her work. 

360 skilled artisans worked in synchrony, like an orchestra, for over three months to bring the artwork to life. To realise these exceptional pieces, master artisans from the Chanakya ateliers and female artisans from the Chanakya School of Craft used over 80 hand-embroidery techniques to highlight textiles’ unique capacity for detail, colour, and texture. The works included fine examples of crochet, running stitch, back stitch, satin stitch, and honeycomb techniques, leveraging materials such as cotton threads, raw silk, and lurex to construct an esoteric environment. The harmonious interplay of celestial, animal, and human elements were re-interpreted in craft by joining metal and silk threads to create a mindscape that is both luminous and mysterious—delicate and boundless. 

By weaving exceptional collaborations with Maria Grazia and Dior, we celebrated the transmission and plural beauty of Indian savoir-faire. At the convergence of art, craft, and haute couture, the commission of such large-scale embroidered works were able to dismantle the barriers between craft and high art, allowing them to cross-pollinate, inspire, and enable a conceptually rich result.