Surreal Fashion in Surreal Times

Fashion : Love

07 April 2020

Here at Because HQ (called our living rooms), we've been debating how we share the best of Spring 2020 collections with you, as stores around the world are shut and we're investing in food and basic essentials to keep us healthy and safe. But we've realised that we crave beauty, and are heartened by the extraordinary contributions many of our favourite brands are pivoting to offer, from clothing factories transforming into PPE and scrub production lines, or fragrance labs creating hand sanitisers. Dior is one of those brands, converting their factories into mask production lines.

When we gave some Dior Spring 2020 images to our graphic designer Rafa, he was immediately inspired to create a whole new world. Taking cues from the Surrealists, we're sharing a portfolio of images created from photographs that Dior supplied us, with an artistic take.

Alejandro Jodorowsky's 1973 film role of the Alchemist in the movie The Holy Mountain serves as one of the references for these images. The film-maker's Wikipedia page describes his breadth of work as "...a novelist, screenwriter, a poet, a playwright, an essayist, a film and theatre director and producer, an actor, a film editor, a comics writer, a musician and composer, a philosopher, a puppeteer, a mime, a psychologist and psychoanalyst, a draughtsman, a painter, a sculptor, and a spiritual guru." Yeah, we feel like we haven't accomplished much either...

The Solitudes by Luis de Góngora,a "novel-in-verse", is another reference point for these Dior collages. Written in 1613, it's a tale about being transported and wandering souls, though in these clothes we think there may be more purposeful striding rather than wandering going on. With, or without, fish by your side.

You can shop Dior here.

Written by Caroline Issa.