CHRISTIAN DIOR DIOREVER HANDBAG COLLECTION

CHRISTIAN DIOR DIOREVER HANDBAG COLLECTION

The House’s new bag is timeless down to its very name: Diorever, a Dior that’s ...

May 10, 2016

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The House’s new bag is timeless down to its very name: Diorever, a Dior that’s forever, for every day. Like a small-scale work of architecture, it was in development for over nine months and its production requires more than a day of work. And with good reason: its structured curves, its reversible flap, its metallic clasp, and its often contrasting colors and materials mean that it necessitates the highest savoir-faire in leatherworking.

And here, in the Florentine hinterland, is where it’s made by hand. Everything starts with the choice of skins, and the selection process is highly exacting. The leather has to be deemed flawless in order for it to be cut with a sharp blade following the cardboard patterns for the bag’s forty-seven elements.

On the body of the Chrstian Dior Diorever, the artisan will need to make some of the openings for the thirty-two metallic accessories the bag boasts. Using a round-headed hammer, he taps the skin with an iron punch the exact measurements of the crest-shaped clasp, and then with a circular one to perforate holes for the six visible magnets that will grace the bag’s front, back and flap.

From precious skins to the more classic ones, along with the most innovative, too, each has its own form, because each behaves differently and doesn’t wrap around the wooden curves in the same way. And so the artisan shapes and works the leather in the manner of a couturier sculpting a fold or a drape in fabric on a mannequin.

This aesthetic choice turns a spotlight on the elements of construction that play a part in the beauty of the item as a whole. Like a couture signature, the name “Christian Dior” is embossed on a silver ribbon.

Go behind the scenes and watch the making of the Diorever handbag, a testament to the perpetuity of the House’s leatherworking savoir-faire.

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