PARIS — The Dior Lady Art project is turning 10.

The French fashion house is celebrating the anniversary with a book, due to be published by Rizzoli in October, showcasing 99 artists’ interpretations of its signature Lady Dior bag. 

For the 10th edition, Dior has invited 10 artists to take part, including Marc Quinn, who kicked off the series in 2016 with a capsule collection commemorating the opening of Dior’s store on London’s New Bond Street.

“It was such a success that we decided to do it every year-end with around 10 artists for each edition,” said Olivier Bialobos, Dior’s deputy managing director in charge of global communication and image.

Joining Quinn this time around are fellow U.K. artist Lakwena; U.S. artists Jessica Cannon and Patrick Eugène; Eva Jospin and Inès Longevial from France; China’s Ju Ting; South Korean artist Lee Ufan; Alymamah Rashed from Kuwait, and Sophia Loeb from Brazil.

Ufan’s designs were unveiled in April as part of the “Christian Dior: Designer of Dreams” exhibition in Seoul. The others will be rolled out from late October exclusively at the Dior flagships on Avenue Montaigne in Paris and at Shanghai luxury shopping mall Plaza 66.

Other locations will receive a selection of designs from mid-November to mid-December, and participating artists will be featured on the Dior Talks podcast.

Bialobos noted that Dior has a long-standing relationship with the art world. “It’s linked to the history of the house, because before being a couturier, Mr. Dior was a gallery owner,” he said.

From John Galliano’s 60th anniversary show titled “Le Bal des Artistes,” in which each look was inspired by a painter, to Maria Grazia Chiuri’s work with a cadre of feminist artists, each creative director of the house has brought their own spin to the tradition.

Jonathan Anderson, who last month became Dior’s eighth couturier, is no exception. His debut collection for the house, shown during Paris men’s fashion week, included a tasseled Lady Dior bag designed by Sheila Hicks. 

“Jonathan loves the project,” said Bialobos. “He’s already given me a list of artists with whom he would like to collaborate for next year.”

With artists from every region of the world, the Dior Lady Art project casts a wide net, with both established and emerging artists flocking to put their spin on the pillar handbag style. 

“Very few have turned us down,” Bialobos said. “Even those who were skeptical to begin with got really caught up in the project.”

Hidden Meanings

Judy Chicago, Faith Ringgold, Lee Bul and Joana Vasconcelos are among the art world luminaries who have taken part. 

“We don’t just pick superstars. Every year, we also try to provide a platform for emerging talents and we have a sort of mix,” Bialobos said. “You might have a little-known young artist next to someone like John Giorno or Gilbert & George. That’s what’s nice about it.”

Cannon was intrigued by the idea of translating her cosmic landscapes laced with iridescent pigments into objects. Each of her three designs features a pearlescent shell-like ornament at its center, evoking a sun, moon or planet. 

“This is actually the first time I’ve seen my paintings translated into another medium and so it sparked all of these questions and ideas about how some of that could come back into the paintings, and maybe how the paintings can live in the world in ways that I hadn’t considered,” she told WWD.

Details like tulle ruffles, pearls and rhinestones echo the ornate embellishments of a couture gown, but are full of hidden meaning.

“One way that I felt like I really connected with fashion in this project is understanding that it’s a public expression that can come from a very intimate place, and I think paintings are also that way,” Cannon said. 

“There’s a public dimension to them when they’re finished, but the ideas behind them and the process of making them is much more about this interiority,” she said. “My hope is that people who wear the bags or view them will connect with that interiority a bit as well.”

Eugène also embraced embellishment, though in his case, the use of pearls was a way of paying tribute to his Haitian heritage. 

“I’m inspired by the past, both personal and ancestral, the resilience of Haitians, and the ways culture is preserved and reinterpreted across generations,” he said in a statement. 

He approached his three reinterpretations of the Lady Dior as if they were accessories that might be carried by the subjects of his portraits. His leather and textile patchworks incorporate elements like wooden beads, macramé, raffia embroidery and straw weaving.

On one of the medium-sized bags, woven leather side panels are studded with small pearls — a nod to Haiti’s historic nickname as the “Pearl of the Antilles.”

“Pearls have long symbolized purity and refinement in fashion, especially at Dior. I wanted to take that symbol and infuse it with a deeper meaning — one that speaks to strength, endurance, and legacy. The women in my paintings wear pearls as quiet emblems of grace and survival,” explained Eugène.

He views the bag as a powerful canvas for artists. “It’s about expanding the definition of art. Art doesn’t have to be confined to gallery walls; it can move, it can be worn, it can engage with everyday life. Dior Lady Art celebrates that idea,” he said.

New horizons

Cannon liked the idea of the bag outliving its wearer.

“I love the fact that this is an invitation to touch the art and to perhaps have it be touched, maybe not just by one generation, but by multiple generations of people who might carry the bag, hold on to it, share it with others — because that’s definitely my relationship with things from my mom or my grandmother,” she said. 

She traveled to Paris twice, once to visit La Galerie Dior, the exhibition space at the brand’s historic flagship, for her initial research, and again in March to see the final prototypes at the Dior workshop. 

“I feel very inspired by just the breadth and depth of technical research that they did, and how carefully and thoughtfully the imagery was translated into those materials,” Cannon said. 

“This experience has been just an absolute dream, and for it to be the first experience, it just initiated me into all of these possibilities that I would be very open to exploring if other opportunities were to come up,” she added. 

Bialobos said that once artists have had a taste of working with Dior’s artisans, they often come back for more. 

Chicago, for example, started by designing a set for one of Chiuri’s shows, then took part in the Dior Lady Art project. Her latest creation for the house is a special trunk for its Miss Dior perfume.

“Artists arrive either with ideas, drawings — sometimes very precise, depending on the artist — or even prototypes, and it challenges the studio and the workshops to push creativity to its peak,” said Bialobos. 

“For instance, Korean artist Lee Bul wanted her bag to be made of stone. That might seem a little crazy or even impossible, because a bag made of stone would weigh a ton, but the workshop found a way to laser cut the stone so that it was finer than leather,” he recalled. 

Each bag is produced in a limited edition of 100. “We don’t always produce all 100 pieces, either for technical reasons, or because we want to keep some for later. But there are some which are sold out and which are unfortunately no longer made,” he said.

Some collectors have been known to snap up six or seven bags at a time. “At our annual cocktail at Frieze in Seoul, we see a lot of women arriving with bags from previous editions,” Bialobos said. “To me, that’s the best reward.”