Christian Dior Hosts Live, Audience-free Fashion Show

FILE:Creations on display during a photocall for the "Christian Dior: Designer of Dreams" exhibition at the Victoria & Albert (V&A) Museum in London, Britain January 30, 2019. REUTERS/Henry Nicholls
FILE:Creations on display during a photocall for the "Christian Dior: Designer of Dreams" exhibition at the Victoria & Albert (V&A) Museum in London, Britain January 30, 2019. REUTERS/Henry Nicholls
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Christian Dior Hosts Live, Audience-free Fashion Show

FILE:Creations on display during a photocall for the "Christian Dior: Designer of Dreams" exhibition at the Victoria & Albert (V&A) Museum in London, Britain January 30, 2019. REUTERS/Henry Nicholls
FILE:Creations on display during a photocall for the "Christian Dior: Designer of Dreams" exhibition at the Victoria & Albert (V&A) Museum in London, Britain January 30, 2019. REUTERS/Henry Nicholls

Christian Dior hosted a live but audience-free fashion show on Wednesday in the Italian city of Lecce, in a dazzling celebration of local crafts and traditions that included a dance spectacle in the middle of the baroque main square.

Luxury labels are tentatively returning to the catwalk after the coronavirus pandemic, and Dior streamed the show live without the usual array of celebrities in the front row.

But the French brand upped the ante by staging an extravanga with a live orchestra and dancers performing a modern take on a traditional tune, while models wound their way through a gallery of lights called Luminarie in Lecce’s Piazza del Duomo.

Outfits in the so-called “Cruise” collection included embroidered dresses with firework patterns, in a nod to Italian folklore, while artist Pietro Ruffo’s wildflower drawings were translated onto colorful dresses.

Dior’s Italian creative chief Maria Grazia Chiuri said she had sought to showcase the craftmanship of the Puglia region - her father’s homeland - and help it endure by casting it in a fresh light, Reuters reported.

“I understood in this process where my passion and my origins are from and why I am so attracted to this type of work, this embroidery, this tradition,” Chiuri told Reuters in an interview.

“I saw my grandmother, my aunts, women used to sit outside their homes and create this beautiful work.”



Zara Owner Inditex Launches Fund to Finance Textile Innovation

A woman carries a bag from Spanish multinational retail clothing chain Zara, the flagship brand of the Inditex clothing company, in the Gran Via of Bilbao, Spain, March 12, 2024. (Reuters)
A woman carries a bag from Spanish multinational retail clothing chain Zara, the flagship brand of the Inditex clothing company, in the Gran Via of Bilbao, Spain, March 12, 2024. (Reuters)
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Zara Owner Inditex Launches Fund to Finance Textile Innovation

A woman carries a bag from Spanish multinational retail clothing chain Zara, the flagship brand of the Inditex clothing company, in the Gran Via of Bilbao, Spain, March 12, 2024. (Reuters)
A woman carries a bag from Spanish multinational retail clothing chain Zara, the flagship brand of the Inditex clothing company, in the Gran Via of Bilbao, Spain, March 12, 2024. (Reuters)

Zara owner Inditex has launched a fund to invest around 50 million euros ($54.75 million) in innovation projects, mainly in the textile sector.
Spanish website El Confidencial on Friday reported Inditex's decision to invest in a new fund, which the company confirmed to Reuters.
The new fund, to be managed by the firm Mundi Ventures, aims to support the fashion giant's strategy of backing new start-ups to find new materials or technologies that have a lower impact on the environment.
Inditex, which has pledged to halve emissions in its entire supply chain by 2030, has invested in US firms such as Circ, which focuses on textile-to-textile recycling, and more recently in Galy, a US start-up developing a process to produce cotton in laboratories from plant cells.
Inditex has committed to making 25% of its garments from new fibers that do not yet exist on an industrial scale, and is investing heavily in their development.