From Podcasts to Pampering: How French Brands Are Celebrating International Women’s Day
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PARIS — Fashion brands and luxury houses are launching a number of initiatives to celebrate International Women’s Day on March 8.
Dior will be unveiling the first in a series of podcasts featuring artists, collaborators and friends of the house. The first “Dior Talks” are devoted to feminist art and will feature Judy Chicago, Tomaso Binga and Mickalene Thomas, who have all collaborated with women’s creative director Maria Grazia Chiuri on her shows.
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Other featured guests including British artist Tracey Emin and Paola Ugolini, one of the curators of the upcoming “I Say I” exhibition at the National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art in Rome, sponsored by Dior, which inspired one of Chiuri’s slogan T-shirts for fall 2020.
The exclusive conversations will tackle topics such as the links between ethics and aesthetics, rebellion and dialogue, identity construction and the essential role played by clothing, as well as the representation of gender and its impact on societal behavior.
“These big questions, initially raised by Maria Grazia Chiuri in her manifesto collections, are debated; the entirety of her creative process represents an unwavering support for women artists who disrupt and rewrite our preconceived views of the world,” Dior said in a statement.
The interviews, hosted by journalists, historians and curators including Justine Picardie and Katy Hessel, will be available from March 8 on podcasts.dior.com and numerous podcast platforms.
Dior’s parent company, luxury conglomerate LVMH Mo?t Hennessy Louis Vuitton, is also branching out into podcasts in order to celebrate International Women’s Day.
Starting today, a series of podcasts named “Tips to the Top” will be released on all major streaming platforms, as well as on the group’s internal radio channel Shero. LVMH chose womanhood as the theme of its first podcasts — which is fitting, since almost three-quarters of the luxury group’s employees are women.
The episodes will focus on 12 female talents, who are either part of LVMH and its maisons or are close collaborators, such as Anastasia Mikova, co-director of documentary “Woman.”
Additionally, the company is supporting “Une Journée Pour Soi,” an initiative in partnership with French charity Secours Populaire, for the second year running.
On March 6, 400 women from underprivileged backgrounds are invited to the Chateau de Versailles for a day of pampering, including beauty sessions with makeup artists from the LVMH houses and a photo shoot with professional photographers. The initiative will spread to five other cities in France, ending up with a final session at the Louvre Lens on March 31.
“This second edition of ‘Une Journée pour Soi’ is the proof of our continued support of women from impoverished backgrounds,” Antoine Arnault, head of communications and image at LVMH, said in a statement. “We have been able to realize how much this day, which helps rebuild self-confidence, can be a source of energy.”
Over at Chloé, two women have been named ambassadors of “Girls Forward,” a new partnership between the fashion house and UNICEF. Starting March 8, actresses Katie Holmes and Lucy Boynton will appear in videos on Chloé’s social media channels to broadcast the house’s support of UNICEF gender-equality programs, which aim to help 6.5 million adolescent girls and young women around the world advance in the workplace.
The campaign will also feature a capsule collection with all profits going to UNICEF. The collection, which consists of an organic cotton T-shirt in two colorways, as well as a necklace and bracelet, will drop on March 6 in Chloé boutiques in France, the U.K., the U.S., Japan and South Korea, as well as on chloe.com.
Last but not least, Galeries Lafayette has announced its partnership with women’s rights charity Fondation des Femmes, helping create the organization’s “Cité Audacieuse,” the first venue in France dedicated to the promotion of gender equality, which opened on March 5.
In addition to funding the project — which will serve as a business incubator and research space, and will be fully open to the general public — 50 Galeries Lafayette employees helped complete construction work on the building.
“This partnership is another concrete illustration of our convictions and desire to provide women with the most equitable and respectful work and personal environment possible,” Frédérique Chemaly, director of human resources and sustainable development at the Galeries Lafayette and BHV Marais, said in a statement.
To celebrate the opening of Cité Audacieuse, the department store has teamed with French brands Rive Droite and Patine to design a clutch bag and a T-shirt. All the profits from sales will be donated to the Fondation des Femmes.
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