Carine Roitfeld on the magic of Dior

When the financial services firm UBS tapped Carine Roitfeld to curate a special exhibition on the house of Dior, the legendary French fashion editor was more than game for the job. In fact, you might say she was born to do it – Roitfeld was delivered in a Parisian hospital directly across the street from the maison’s legendary 30 Avenue Montaigne address.

Kismet aside, Roitfeld, who helmed French Vogue for more than a decade before founding the magazine CR Fashion Book in 2012, has had a long-standing relationship with Dior and has met every creative director since Gianfranco Ferré.

For the project, the second in UBS’ ‘House of Craft’ exhibition series, she teamed up with fashion photographer Brigitte Niedermair to photograph some of the most memorable couture looks in the maison’s archives. The exhibition brings together eight decades of Dior and the work of eight of the house’s creative directors (Maria Grazia Chiuri, after a nine-year tenure, has been replaced by Jonathan Anderson). For Roitfeld, the exhibition was an opportunity to revel in the unexpected within the context of a heritage house – to give the fashion a new look, so to speak.

‘Carine brings her unmatched aesthetic sensibility to the programme,’ says John McDonald, chief marketing officer of UBS Group. ‘We’ve long admired Carine’s unique ability to bridge heritage and modernity through her creative lens, and it was clear she shares our passion for craft as both an art form and a mindset.’

The three-day exhibition, which opens Friday 6 June at 28 Pine Street in Manhattan, showcases Niedermair’s energetic photography alongside a selection of archival couture looks. The show is free to the public, and will also include programming and talks.

We caught up with Roitfeld, who was en route to a photo shoot, about her relationship with Dior and what it was like to dive into its storied archives.

Go inside the UBS House of Craft x Dior exhibition

Wallpaper*: Could you tell me a little bit about your relationship with Dior and some of your early memories working alongside the house?

Carine Roitfeld: I was born at Clinique Matignon in Paris, right in front of 30 Avenue Montaigne and so was my daughter. So it was, let’s say, my first meeting with Dior. And after, of course, I met all the different designers. I did not meet Marc Bohan, but I met Gianfranco Ferré when I was working at Vogue. Dior is very important to me – Olivier Bialobos [Dior’s longtime chief communications officer] is my oldest friend in fashion. I know [Dior CEO] Delphine Arnault very well. I feel very comfortable working with the team.

W*: It's like working with family, I would imagine...

CR: Yes! And I love the clothes. For the show in New York, I bought two Dior jackets because I think it's a moment to wear Dior in my propre way.

W*: What was it like to work within the Dior archive? Did you make discoveries? Were there surprises along the way?

CR: It’s an old house. So you have so much beautiful heritage. It was very fun to talk with [the archivists] because you learn so many things. I didn't really know Marc Bohan, but I suddenly discovered him. He ran Dior for 29 years. He did amazing looks that, honestly, I didn’t know. And I didn’t know it was Monsieur Ferré who created the Lady Dior bag. Of course, we all know the story about Lady Diana, but I didn’t know he was the one that created it. I also didn't know that the perfume, Miss Dior, was created by Monsieur Dior himself. Suddenly you have a sketch, an idea of the Dior timeline that I didn’t have before.

It's a bit of a special moment for Dior, because someone is leaving, someone is not there yet – it’s a very good diplomatic moment. So we brought all the clothes together of seven past designers, plus Kim Jones. And sometimes we mixed them, like a jacket by Monsieur Dior on a John Galliano couture dress. You know, that sort of thing is not something that usually is possible. It’s what makes this exhibition quite extraordinary and quite unique.

W*: Do you have a particularly favourite era?

CR: I like to discover things so it was very interesting to discover Marc Bohan’s looks. He was a very chic man, en plus, and very important in the Dior house. And of course, I'm a friend of John Galliano. The couture dresses of John Galliano are unique. I like Raf [Simons] because the simplicity of the work is more difficult to do because everything has to be perfect. And Maria Grazia Chiuri, she liked, for example, to put the Bar Jacket with a hoodie. She tried to make it more down to the street. So each had a different point of view on Monsieur Dior. But there’s a link between everyone.

W*: The theme of the exhibition is about exploring craft. Could you talk a little bit about craft in the Dior history, and what you discovered about it by being able to access the archive in such a hands-on way?

CR: Just the way they keep the dresses – it's a special temperature, a special hanger, sometimes the dresses come in a big tent. I had never seen that. And of course, the craft is very important because it's a talent. This is a very French talent and Dior does it with the clothes, the bags, the shoes, the jewellery, because they touch everything. We had the freedom to play with the clothes, but you also must respect them because of how much time it takes to create each dress. I like the idea that all of the dresses have history.

W*: You've worked with photographers your entire career, but what are the specific challenges of highlighting craft through flat images?

CR: You need to respect the dress and respect the people working with these vintages. We want a dress that was made maybe 50 years ago to look modern. We don’t want to create something that you wouldn’t wear today. Nothing looks old, nothing looks demodé. Everything is a link to be wearable today, and to give you the desire to wear them today. I think it was to respect the dress, respect the work, and give them modernity,

W*: Do you have an example of how you did that in one of the photos?

CR: Sometimes, you know, we’d incorporate a classic Monsieur Dior jacket with the model in a latex skirt. It’s so simple. That was the sort of thing we tried to do.

W*: Yes, absolutely. How was it working with Brigitte? Had you worked with her before in your career?

CR: I’ve been working with Brigitte for 12 or 13 years in CR Fashion Book. And we did, one time, a jewellery story about Dior for CR Fashion Book and [that's] the reason that Olivier met her, and now they're working a lot together. So everyone knows each other very well. Brigitte is very, very smart. So she finds the idea between everything in her photographs. It was all prepared in advance. We played a lot with the hair, with the make-up, to make it surprising, but it was very, very prepared.

W*: There've been a lot of exhibitions about Dior – I’m thinking of ‘Designer of Dreams’. What does the UBS exhibition say that's maybe fresh or new about the house of Dior?

CR: I think usually, when they show photographs in shows, they’re like still-lifes. There’s a big difference between seeing the clothes worn – when there is life inside the clothes it’s more modern immediately, you know? Dior is a quiet designer, sometimes. Here, we become a bit crazy, because we mix the hair and the make-up – and it makes everything more exciting.

W*: It’s treating everything with respect, but injecting it with fresh energy.

CR: Exactly. Dior gave us a lot of freedom and when they saw everything they were happy. So I think everyone had the same energy.

W*: What is it like to wear a Dior garment? How does it make you feel?

CR: I'm lucky that one time, John Galliano made a couture dress for me, so I got to go to Dior as a customer. The colour of the room, the lady taking care of you, all the people around you trying to adjust the drape on you – it’s a dream, because suddenly you feel like a princess. I wore it to an amFAR gala and I kept it, of course, because you have your name embroidered inside and the year – so it's really yours.

The dress, of course, is great, but the experience is even more. I’ll never forget it.

UBS House of Craft x Dior curated by Carine Roitfeld runs at 28 Pine Street, New York, 10005 from 6–8 June 2025, ubs.com

Exhibition design by architects opng