The Lady Dior bag gets a new look, with a little help from some friends

Following the introduction of its Dior Lady Art project 10 years ago at Art Basel Miami Beach 2016, the maison has extended carte blanche to a global list of creatives. Both blue-chip names and artists on the rise have since reimagined the Lady Dior bag. Among them are Mickalene Thomas, Ian Davenport and Judy Chicago. In 2017, German-American artist Friedrich Kunath, whose work – created in his studio in southern California – features permanently in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and Paris’ Centre Pompidou, added rainbow-coloured handles and cloud-shaped charms to his Lady Dior.

French painter Inès Longevial is among this year’s line-up of 10 collaborators, which also includes UK-based artists Marc Quinn and Lakwena, and Haitian-American painter Patrick Eugène.

Longevial is known for her use of colour in portraiture. It’s a specialism she has now applied to a trio of Dior creations. One Lady Dior bag is emblazoned with a blue-tone female likeness embroidered with multidirectional threads; another is made using a patchwork assemblage of the artist’s best-known works and is topped with a crown of dusty lilac feathers. ‘As a child, I watched my grandmother assemble fabrics with infinite patience. Patchwork has always been a part of my imagination,’ Longevial explains of the design. ‘I worked on an assemblage of faces and details, such as flowers, suns and snakes.’ Finally, a mini Lady Dior is embroidered throughout.

At Dior, every Lady Dior bag comes with a bundle of charms spelling the brand’s name in polished metal. It’s a detail Longevial reinterpreted on her feather-topped design, separating the four letters and placing them across to visually striking effect. ‘This bag could well be the evening companion of David Bowie or Niki de Saint Phalle,’ she decrees.