Slimane’s first act as art director of the Dior Homme collections (with control over its corporate image and hence also over the architecture of its boutiques) was to design the Paris space in which the line would be created.

The perception of space is lost in the reflections of light on the surfaces of the long mirror wall and the glass that frames the staircase, right.

The atelier would become the model for the stores that would diffuse the Dior Homme brand throughout the world. With a minimum of immaculately crafted details, a certain futuristic Aura is suggested by the slices of light that give the space an immaterial impression. Despite the air of modernity that Slimane is striving for, the mood in the rue Francois 1er salon is rooted in the atelier’s classical tradition. Dior himself had seen it as the point of departure for his distinctive version of contemporary elegance. And the pearl-grey moquette and Louis XIV chairs with the Dior medallion on the back are reminders of the kind of couture house of which Dior is the most classic expression.

Pierre Huyghe’s art work in the midst of Slimane’s design raises the difficult issue of the relationship between culture and commerce.

The Dior Homme boutique in Milan, while maintaining this spirit and repeating the allusions, goes farther in its blending of culture and commerce. Each new ‘space of diffusion’ for the Dior Homme collections – as the fashion house prefers to call its boutiques – is associated with the work of an artist. Pierre Huyghe, who represented France at the last Venice Biennale and is currently exhibiting at Documenta 11 in Kassel, has designed, within a defined architectural volume in the Milan store, a space intended to serve as a changing room on the sales floor.

The booth is a secluded, intimate space. On entering, the customer is naturally encouraged to walk straight to the end wall, almost hitting his own image reflected in a mirror. It is as if he had suddenly bumped into a twin he hadn’t seen since birth. Running the length of the booth is a luminous shadow that moves along the wall with the customer. The narrow and elongated space suggests walking right to the other end: movement causes the wall of LEDs to react, and its surface duplicates in light the visitor’s gestures. In fact, the body unconsciously intersects various beams of light as it moves along the booth.

Dior Homme Milan
Address: 14 Montenapoleone, Milan, Italy
Tel: +39 (0)2 7639 8530
https://www.dior.com