Dior show can open new doors for Scottish fashion

The highly exclusive event, hosted at Drummond Castle in Perthshire, invited the glitz and glamour of the international runway to Scotland.

Famous faces spotted among the coveted front row included Hollywood heavyweights Anya Taylor-Joy and Jennifer Lawrence, and US Open champion Emma Raducanu.

It has been almost 70 years since Dior brought its creative genius to Scotland, with the inspiration stemming from creative director Maria Grazia Chiuri’s interest in Mary Queen of Scots and how she utilised embroidery during her imprisonment in a political fashion.

READ MORE: I went to Dior's Drummond Castle show – here's what it was like

Besides politics, my other fierce passion for as long as I can remember has been fashion. In my opinion, the finest expression of art and creativity there is.

A seamless intertwining of art, history and culture. So, the French fashion house bringing their show to my home turf after so long was a particularly exciting prospect for me.

Each look on the catwalk, the setting of which was the private gardens of Drummond Castle which poetically have come to be known as the “Versailles of Scotland”, was laced with Scottish influence and culture and had a specific focus on Scotland’s internationally respected textiles industry.

Delving into Renaissance Scotland and featuring an array of yellows, greens and purples in what Chiuri described as being a nod to the “cinematic” Scottish landscape that captured her creative eye when she was planning the collection – it was a creative masterpiece to behold.

Founder of the fashion house, Christian Dior himself, was a renowned lover of Scotland and his appreciation for our country was the catalyst for this year’s return to Perthshire, where Dior first began his love affair with Scotland back in 1951 with the showing of his spring collection.

In fact, there were photos of him backstage at the 1955 Dior show in the Gleneagles ballroom emblazoned on tote bags at Monday’s event.

This wasn’t just your usual Scottish-influenced fashion offering. It wasn’t the type of tokenistic representation that has seen our rich textile heritage copied, pasted and ripped off in various forms over the fashion decades.

In fact, Scottish textile houses like Johnstons of Elgin and Harris Tweed were invited to collaborate on the collection that had elements of the Jacobean era, as well as a fond nod to the political defiance of Mary Queen of Scots.

With Chiuri opting to remember the late Scottish queen’s ahead-of-her-time feminist rebellion in what was a nod to her own creative style that harnesses the empowerment of women.

Further inspiration for the collection was drawn more broadly from Chiuri’s appreciation for the global nature of fashion and is part of a wider project by the fashion house to spotlight creatives from across the globe.

Keen to decentralise the fashion industry, she said that “not everything is done in Paris or Milan, fashion is a global industry”.

READ MORE: How Dior championed Scottish culture and heritage at its Perthshire show

It is frustrating as a Scottish fashion enthusiast that more brands of the same calibre as Dior do not branch out into Scotland more often.

The producers of world-class textiles such as tweed and cashmere, the hallmark even of some of the most successful high-fashion brands in the world (looking at you, Chanel), should have a bigger seat at the table when it comes to this industry. And our government should do more to promote it globally, too.

From what I have read and seen of the event on Monday, those in attendance could not have been more complimentary of the surroundings or the Scottish experience, and the collection itself being such an exquisite representation of Scottish design and influence – I hope this opens the door for other brands in the near future and encourages a new generation of appreciation for Scottish design.

Fashion is admittedly a flawed industry, one of the finest examples of an industry that has been viciously hijacked by capitalism, wealth and celebrity status to the point that its purpose and messaging are often lost.

Fashion has been a political tool for centuries, and has been the hallmark of more than one revolution.

While the fashion geek in me thoroughly enjoyed this week’s out-of-the-ordinary return for Scotland to the high-fashion stage, I also will not bypass the fact that Dior, whether creatively genius and a friend to Scotland or not, was recently alleged to have parted ways with Palestinian supermodel Bella Hadid – once the face of the brand – over her public support of Palestine.

A would-be insult almost to the history of fashion itself if correct, which is a historically political and rebellious art.

Though it is now often defined and dictated by the world’s elite and is entrapped in a classist vortex of inequality, it should not be forgotten that fashion as an art form belongs to the entire world, and all of its causes.

And whether you can afford to indulge in the opulence of Dior or similar houses or not does not dictate whether or not fashion is yours to enjoy, decipher or rebel in.