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On Wednesday, Dior inaugurated its ‘Christian Dior, Designer of Dreams’ exhibit at the Saudi National Museum in Riyadh with great fanfare. Faisal Bafarat, CEO of the Saudi government’s General Entertainment Authority (GEA), and Patrick Maisonnave, French ambassador to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, toured the show with Olivier Bialobos, Dior deputy managing director in charge of global communication and image, and curator Florence Müller.
Around 300 guests attended the opening and ended their visit with a raspberry mocktail at the Dior café in the museum’s garden. Afterwards, some braved the Riyadh traffic to convene at the French embassy for a reception. “From its very beginning, the house of Dior has embedded the essence of French genius and creativity,” the ambassador said in his speech, calling the exhibition a “perfect testimony to this remarkable legacy”.
The Riyadh exhibit covers 2,500 square metres, with scenographer Nathalie Crinière having made the most of the vast space and high ceilings; the show opens onto an almost life-size replica of the facade of Dior’s historic Avenue Montaigne flagship. The exhibit also nods to local culture. There’s a room dedicated to the desert, with creations in mineral and beige hues like the Christian Dior ‘Sable’ (sand) ensemble of 1957, as well as creations by Gianfranco Ferré, John Galliano and Maria Grazia Chiuri, against a backdrop of rocky cliffs inspired by the Saudi site of AlUla. (A lens conceived by Dior with Snapchat adds torches to the scenography.) The room also features a special edition of the ‘Dune’ perfume bottle.
“Exhibitions are never the same, we always adapt to the location,” Bialobos tells Vogue Business. “They are tailor-made.”
There’s a new room dedicated to Miss Dior, the first ready-to-wear line introduced in 1967 under Marc Bohan, who was the first to playfully print the house’s moniker on ready-to-wear and accessories. It’s a timely addition to the exhibition, given Chiuri was inspired by Miss Dior for her Autumn/Winter 2024 collection.
Exhibitions are a key part of Dior’s communications strategy. The LVMH-owned brand led by chairman and CEO Delphine Arnault generated sales of €9.48 billion in 2023, according to HSBC estimates, making it the conglomerate’s second largest fashion house. As the house navigates the luxury slowdown, highlighting the heritage of the brand, which boasts the world’s largest haute couture collection as well as the creativity and know-how, is all the more essential. “Especially in the heckled times we are going through, a return to the roots and values is all-important,” Bialobos says.
The executive has been notably driving the effort when it comes to acquiring archive pieces, collaborating with cultural institutions and heading up the Galerie Dior in Paris, which has drawn over a million visitors since its opening in March 2022. It’s about “enriching, preserving and sharing our heritage”, Bialobos adds.
Storytelling is also key, in all formats, whether it be via the Galerie Dior, travelling exhibitions, collaborations with artists, documentaries (a YouTube documentary on the making of Maria Grazia Chiuri’s cruise show in Scotland is slated for imminent release), books, podcasts, store windows or holiday packaging that features a QR code to access information. Remember the 2022 Harrods takeover and the Saks Fifth Avenue window display in 2023 ahead of the holiday season? Dior reused some of the holiday decorations from years past to create an expansive lights installation across the front of its Parisian flagship this season.
‘Christian Dior, Designer of Dreams’, retracing the history of the house, first opened at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris in 2017 for the maison’s 70th anniversary. Since then, it has travelled the world — from the Brooklyn Museum to London’s V&A and the West Bund Museum in Shanghai. The exhibition has collectively drawn over two million visitors since its opening. This edition could break new records, especially since it’s part of the Riyadh season, an annual festival held from October through March that includes fashion, sports and entertainment, bringing millions of tourists to the Saudi Arabian capital. (The recent Elie Saab show was also part of the Riyadh season programme, as well as tennis tournament Six Kings Slam featuring Jannik Sinner and other top players.)
Exhibitions can also lift sales locally. “Most of the time the client will dress in Dior to attend the opening night,” Bialobos notes. Case in point: a very large number of guests wore the Lady Dior bag in all sizes at the Riyadh opening. It can even trigger some couture orders, with the house receiving requests in the US and Japan for original looks designed by Christian Dior off the back of the show, according to Bialobos. “We have the sewing patterns so we can make them,” he says. Like a fashion show, exhibitions also have a resonance through social media.
The Riyadh opening is timely as luxury in the region continues to prove resilient in the midst of a downturn. Dior is set to open a third store in the capital (and a fourth store in Saudi Arabia) next year, in the Solitaire Mall.
Exhibitions allow the story to reach a wider audience who aren’t necessarily Dior customers, says Bialobos. “This exhibition is designed to make people of all ages dream, and maybe even inspire them to want to work in fashion one day — not necessarily to sell a Lady Dior bag.”
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