Dior/Lindbergh, the photographer’s last project for the luxury label

By

Dominique Muret

Translated by
Nicola Mira

Published
Nov 13, 2019

Dior’s most iconic creations photographed in black and white in the streets of present-day New York: the images are as beautiful as they are surreal, breathing life into superb models from the past that we would ordinarily only see immortalised in museums. A crazy project, one that Peter Lindbergh was able to realise last year with the help of the French luxury label. The result is a photographic book, published this week by Taschen.
 

‘Dior/Lindbergh’, the latest publication dedicated to the work of the renowned German photographer, who died on September 3 2019 aged 74, is made up of two volumes: the first, entitled ‘New York’, focuses on the New York project; the second, ‘Archives’, collects over 100 pictures taken by Lindbergh for Dior, which were featured in top fashion magazines, from Vogue to Vanity Fair and Harper’s Bazaar, in the course of Lindbergh’s 30-year career. Three decades during which Lindbergh became “one of the label's closest collaborators,” as Dior underlined in a press release.
  
Black and white images are predominant in both volumes, though the occasional colour photo does pop up too. The New York volume is especially touching and interesting, since it illustrates a fashion vision that is alive and contemporary, effortlessly dusting the years off Dior’s creations and enshrining them into eternity. To help Lindbergh fulfil this “dream, at once extravagant and extraordinary,” Dior despatched across the Atlantic an exceptional shipment of over 80 fashion creations from its archives.

The photographer’s artistic touch and talent did the rest. During the photoshoot in the streets around Times Square, in October 2018, Lindbergh encouraged the models to blend in with the crowd and with New York’s vibrant atmosphere. “Wake up! Get out into this crazy world and let’s see what happens,” he urged Karen Elson, Saskia de Brauw, Carolyn Murphy, Amber Valletta and Sasha Pivovarova, as Dior reports.
 

From the iconic Bar suit designed by Christian Dior in 1947, worn with sublime nonchalance by Anglo-Sudanese top model Alek Wek in the New York streets, to models by Raf Simons and Maria Grazia Chiuri, 70 years of Dior’s history are conveyed on these pages, as though snatched on a puff of air, through a selection of the label’s signature haute couture models designed by the seven successive creative directors who have led Dior's ateliers.

Kiki Willems for example wears first a short dress designed by Marc Bohan and then a long taffeta gown by Yves Saint Laurent. A Gianfranco Ferré cocktail dress lends a femme fatale allure to Irina Shayk as she leans against a shop window, while Freja Beha strolls heedlessly across a bustling thoroughfare clad in a sheer corset dress concocted by John Galliano in 2005.