When Princess Diana first began carrying Dior’s now-iconic design in the mid-’90s, it was made from a sleek black leather. Later, at her request, the French house crafted a deep blue iteration to match her eyes and the Lady Dior became a chameleonic talisman overnight. For just shy of a decade, Dior has invited dozens of artists to put their spin on the accessory—adding another layer of individualism to its silky lambskin leather, cannage topstitching, and rounded handles.
Now in its 10th edition, the Dior Lady Art initiative counts the likes of Judy Chicago, Jack Pierson, Mickalene Thomas, and more among its alumni. Here, the latest roster of creatives speaks to the wearable objets d’art they’ve been tasked with reimagining.
Jessica Cannon
What role does fashion play in your practice and daily life? What was your understanding of Dior before this collaboration?
In daily life, my relationship with fashion shifts between practical workwear that enables me to move and paint in the studio, and choosing more playful and exciting clothes and accessories on my days off. Before this collaboration, I was familiar with the iconic Christian Dior silhouettes of the 1950s, and I began following the house more closely after seeing Dior and I in 2014, a film that documents Raf Simons’s first couture collection.
Where does the story of your Dior Lady Art handbag begin?
I began by researching Dior’s history and visual language. I read Christian Dior’s autobiography, Justine Picardie’s biography of Catherine Dior, watched films of couture shows, and visited La Galerie Dior in Paris, which allowed me to view many special pieces up close, including several fine jewelry pieces by Victoire de Castellane. I wanted to create something new for this project that would feel like a dialogue across time, between my work and the house of Dior.
Tell us about your material exploration, working with textiles, leather, and hardware, and crossing into a new medium.
In my studio, I often think about how to translate light and natural elements using various types of paint. While working with the Dior team, it was fascinating to learn about materials that can achieve similar effects in ways that are new to me. Some of the materials we used included sculpted tulle and pleated silk, which diffuse light, as well as stones, glass beads, and pearlized elements, which catch light and allow the appearance of the bags to shift with movement.
Ju Ting
What role does fashion play in your practice and daily life? What was your understanding of Dior before this collaboration?
For me, fashion often becomes a prism that refracts the complexities of human nature—when we adjust our collars in front of the mirror, we are essentially fine-tuning the way we converse with the world. This is my first collaboration with Dior. Before this, we didn’t know each other very well.
Where does the story of your Dior Lady Art handbag begin?
This was a delightful encounter between Dior and me. My creations have always been rooted in the existence and growth of contemporary women. Through physical gestures—both big and small, like carving, tearing, folding, and hammering—I ultimately arrive at an abstract visual language. Building upon Dior’s core (continuously redefining modern femininity within a framework of timeless elegance), I emphasized rebellion and resistance. I’ve been persistently pursuing that which transcends time and converses with eternity.
Tell us about your material exploration, working with textiles, leather, and hardware, and crossing into a new medium.
Indeed, before this, most of my works took the form of paintings. But I’ve always had a profound fascination with materials—never confined to acrylic paints. For this bag, I ultimately chose traditional, warm-toned leather for the body, paired with sleek, industrial-grade mirrored metal for the handles and logo lettering. This creates a deliberate clash of softness and hardness.
How do you want the person who carries your Dior Lady Art handbag to feel?
I imagine someone who is confident, free, graceful yet quietly defiant, who uses fashion to narrate their own story. A person pulsating with life.
Patrick Eugène
What role does fashion play in your practice and daily life? What was your understanding of Dior before this collaboration?
Fashion has always been part of how I express myself as an artist, even when I’m not consciously thinking about it. It shows up in how I present myself, in the characters I paint, and in how I approach form and composition. I think of style as another kind of storytelling, one that speaks to emotion, heritage, and identity. Day to day, I lean into pieces that feel lived in—something with texture or history.
Where does the story of your Dior Lady Art handbag begin?
The story starts with the pearls. I’ve often painted women wearing them, in a quiet nod to grace, strength, and legacy. The phrase “Pearl of the Antilles,” which used to describe Haiti, always stayed in the back of my mind. I’ve wanted to reclaim that phrase—to reshape what it means through my work. I didn’t want to just place a painting onto the bag. I imagined what kind of bag these women might actually carry—something that reflects their pride, their elegance, and their connection to culture. I focused on color, on materials that carry memory, and on symbols that speak to identity.
How do you want the person who carries your Dior Lady Art handbag to feel?
I want them to feel like they’re holding something personal. Not just something beautiful, but something meaningful. Something that carries a story. This bag holds a piece of my heritage, the quiet strength of the people I paint, and the power of things made by hand. I hope it feels intimate—like it lives with you, not just on you.
Marc Quinn
Where does the story of your Dior Lady handbag begin?
The Lady Dior handbag designs stem from some of the works I’ve been creating recently—from irises to orchids. All the content you see on the bags comes from my practice, but in a form that’s ready to be activated by the wearer.
Tell us about your material exploration, working with textiles, leather, and hardware, and crossing into a new medium.
These bags are a way of creating bespoke versions of my sculptures and paintings, translated onto a wearable form. In this second series of bags with Dior, I’ve moved more definitively into the realm of sculpture, exploring what’s possible within the context of the project and creating ambitious yet wearable pieces.
How do you want the person who carries your Dior Lady Art handbag to feel?
My hope is for the wearer to feel like a living work of art.
If you could own one of the past Dior Lady Art handbags, whose would you choose?
I would love to own the entire collection, and bring them together as a single installation!
Sophia Loeb
Where does the story of your Dior Lady Art handbag begin?
The handbag started with a feeling. I’ve always been inspired by changes in nature and the body. That’s where my paintings come from, and it’s also how I approached the bag—wanting it to feel alive and textured, almost like it’s in motion. When I thought about the Lady Dior, I saw it as more than just a bag—it’s a symbol, something with history and presence. I wanted to bring my own visual language into that, to wrap the structure of the bag in something more organic and intuitive.
Tell us about your material exploration, working with textiles, leather, and hardware, and crossing into a new medium.
In painting, I’m very focused on texture, layering, and the physicality of materials—so approaching these new surfaces felt like discovering a new kind of canvas. The different textures explored in the bags have their own life and character, and the way they respond to touch and light reminded me of the textures I build in my paintings.
How do you want the person who carries your Dior Lady Art handbag to feel?
As if they’re taking a piece of my artwork with them—something intimate, emotional, and alive. Although, of course, you wouldn’t touch them, my paintings are very tactile, and with this collaboration, I wanted to translate that impression into something you can actually hold, wear, and move with. I hope it sparks a sense of emotional connection—like you’re not just carrying a bag, but something with its own soul.
Lakwena
Where does the story of your Dior Lady Art handbag begin?
At the time that I began talking with Dior about the project, I [had] just had my daughter. She’s my third child and my only daughter, so I was thinking a lot about motherhood, womanhood, and how we hold things as women—the amount that we carry, both physically and emotionally.
Tell us about your material exploration, working with textiles, leather, and hardware, and crossing into a new medium.
The surface of the bag is a leather patchwork with cut pieces of leather intricately appliquéd on top of each other. As I was thinking about holding and the tenderness of touch, I really wanted the bag to be very tactile. The first iteration of the bag took the approach of a painting, but felt too flat to me. Because of this thinking about tactility and embodiment, I really wanted there to be layers to the bag.
The body of work I was making at the time was a series of sculptural paintings, which were assemblages of cut pieces of wood. The bag and the paintings evolved in tandem, and on both, we developed these layered surfaces—on the paintings using wood and on the bag using leather instead.
How do you want the person who carries your Dior Lady Art handbag to feel?
I’d love the person who carries the bag to feel lifted and really special holding it. A lot of my work is very rooted in the everyday and is an attempt to bring these small glimpses of glory to life. I love the opportunity fashion provides to lift us, lift our heads, and do the same.
Alymamah Rashed
What role does fashion play in your practice and daily life? What was your understanding of Dior before this collaboration?
Fashion is a mode of utter freedom—an expressive extension of the self, and a conscious act of layering the stories I choose to carry on my flesh. I wear 11 rings on my fingers, each with its own story, its own symbolism, and a memory of how it was found or gifted. Every day, I decide which narratives I want to tell with my hands—and the hand, to me, holds immense gesture and meaning. Dior, to me, has always represented romance and beauty. Through this collaboration, I am honoring beauty—not just in the aesthetic sense, but in the complexity and duality of what it means to be human.
Where does the story of your Dior Lady Art handbag begin?
For this project, it was essential for me to create signifiers of home. And for me, home is deeply intertwined with elements of nature. One of the bags is rooted in a post-apocalyptic island in Kuwait called Failaka Island, where I spent a full year developing a body of work during my residency with FIKAR. I wanted to honor the very first object I picked up on the island—a washed-up seashell on its shore.
The second bag celebrates the native flower of Kuwait, the humaith, which blooms in vibrant magenta during Kuwait’s fleeting spring. It appears unexpectedly along sidewalks, and each time I see it, it feels like a marker. These two natural elements—the seashell and the humaith flower—are both recurring motifs within my practice.
Inès Longevial
What role does fashion play in your practice and daily life? What was your understanding of Dior before this collaboration?
Fashion is a field where I like to move with my eyes partially covered. I sometimes look at it with suspicion because it can feel like it dictates a silhouette, a movement, a pose. That can deeply irritate me. But I can’t help also seeing it as a space for magic, fiction, and panache. It’s not the object that interests me, it’s what it allows us to invent. Dior was a myth—too vast to really grasp. And that’s exactly what I like: the possibility of projecting an entire imaginary landscape of desire onto it.
Where does the story of your Dior Lady Art handbag begin?
I imagined this bag as a companion, a party friend. It’s waiting for David Bowie backstage after his concert, or sipping a cocktail with Niki de Saint Phalle. I wanted it to be funny, playful, and tender. I certainly didn’t want to illustrate my work on this bag; I preferred to unfold it, to invite it to take on another form.
If you could own one of the past Dior Lady Art handbags, whose would you choose?
Dorothy Iannone’s, obviously. In her work, everything overflows. She invented an intimate, joyful, unfiltered mythology, where desire is a language of its own. I love the idea of decoding her bag. The star I put on the bag, while being a tribute to Christian Dior, is also a wink to the beaded black and white stars on Iannone’s handbag.
Eva Jospin
How would you describe your artistic universe in a few words?
Monumental, attention to detail, changing scales, recurrent motifs.
What influences have shaped your art and creative vision?
My field of inspiration is very broad! From painting to tapestry, the history of gardens, the architecture of follies and troglodyte dwellings (my passion!), to set design, textile arts, and all the incredible inventiveness of the 20th century when a wide variety of materials—even the most basic ones like cardboard, my favorite material—entered the artistic domain.
As Dior Lady Art arrives at its 10th iteration, what does this artistic adventure mean to you personally?
I discovered and followed the different editions of Dior Lady Art with great pleasure. When I had the chance to see the projects, and how the artist’s spirit and imagination had unfolded, I understood that Dior Lady Art constituted, to a certain extent, a portrait of the artist. It’s their way of thinking, embodied in this exceptional creation. It is therefore a great privilege for me to be part of this edition.
How did the collaboration go?
There was a collective energy that allowed me to get as near as possible to what I wanted to achieve. A very fluid and diverse creative dialogue developed, during which a real emulation was forged with the house, enabling me to test several avenues, including a change of scale. I adapted to the micro format after having mainly worked on monumental pieces. The fruitful exchange with Dior led to finding the right size.
Lee Ufan
How would you describe your artistic universe in a few words?
By connecting the inside and the outside, my art highlights an even more open world. My works express the infinity of life through vibrations and silent resonances.
What influences have shaped your art and your creative vision?
I am inspired by the feeling of connection I experience when contemplating the beauty of birdsong, flowers, or the moon.
Which works do you consider to be the most emblematic of your universe?
The works represent a single point traced by the brush on a large canvas.
What do you like most about the Lady Dior bag?
The Lady Dior bag is simple and classic yet universal and innovative. What makes this design unique in your eyes? What creative detail touches you the most? I added a small orange or blue metal line that evokes my brushstrokes. It’s an addition that creates a very subtle accent.
What is your relationship with fashion? How do you think a piece of clothing or an accessory can become a form of expression?
I appreciate designs that represent a person’s individuality rather than those that follow trends.
What does a project like Dior Lady Art represent to you? Do you think it’s a call to celebrate art in all its forms? To break down certain barriers?
In my opinion, Dior Lady Art is an extension of art, but it’s not a painting or a sculpture in itself. It’s a way of expressing art.
in your life?
