Dior Gets Behind Theater Festival Exalting Female Voices

Miles Socha
·2 min read

A STAGE FOR WOMEN: A literary crowd gathered Wednesday night in the winter garden of Dior’s flagship Paris boutique at 30 Avenue Montaigne.

It was a press conference to preview the next edition of Paris des Femmes, a festival at Le Théâtre La Pépinière that debuts new, short plays from women writers across various disciplines.

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Seven of the nine selected for the 2024 edition, scheduled for Jan. 11 to 13 in the French capital, sat on stools next to two tall Christmas trees and gave hints about their works, all written according to the theme revealed by festival cofounder Anne Rotenberg: night.

Rotenberg noted that the festival, which debuted in 2012, has become a springboard for many of the participating writers. Some of the short plays have gone on tour; at least one became a novel, and later an opera that debuted in Lyon, France.

This is the second year Dior has supported Paris des Femmes, in line with Maria Grazia Chiuri’s ongoing collaborations with female artists, photographers and artisans. Dior’s artistic director of women’s collections since 2017, Chiuri is also celebrating the house’s collaborations with female artists in the latest exhibition at its in-house musem, La Galerie Dior.

French journalist Claire Chazal, whose first novel was adapted for television, told the press conference she is impatient to see how the director interprets her latest writings, which she based on dialogue rather than scenography.

“There will be probably two actors, I imagine, one of whom I already know — and I like to know what they are going to wear on stage,” she said.

Recalling the dramatized version of “L’institutrice” many years ago, she allowed “it was very strange to see characters that I had written come to life on the screen.”

Several of the writers present said they were planning autobiographical tales.

Aliyeh Ataei, an Iranian Afghan novelist and screenplay writer, said characters in her story would encounter challenges after escaping the Taliban and arriving in Iran.

She noted it was her first time writing a text for the stage, and the first time in a foreign language.

Dior noted that night was an enduring source of inspiration for founder Christian Dior, whose first collection in 1947 included a style dubbed “Nuit,” the French word for night. He would elaborate on the night them in subsequent collections, including a “Nuit de Noël” look for his fall 1949 collection.

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