Dior’s Lady 95.22 bag: high frequency, high style, high society

“Nothing can be invented,” said Maria Grazia Chiuri. “But, everything can be revisited with fresh eyes.” The Roman designer, who has been shaping Dior womenswear since her appointment as artistic director in the summer of 2016, is pondering one of her most recent creations.

Her Lady 95.22 is a take on one of the Parisian maison’s most beloved accessories, the Lady Dior bag. First issued in 1995, the Lady Dior also rose to fame because of its adoption by royalty: Diana, Princess of Wales was gifted the bag in September 1995, when she attended the opening of a Paul Cézanne exhibition at Paris’s Grand Palais. The design has formed part of Dior’s canon of greats ever since. Its characteristics are well known: the tactile Cannage quilting, the name Dior spelled out in precious metal letters – a tribute to the lucky charms Monsieur Dior turned to for good luck – and its elegant top-handle.

“I wanted to do a Lady Dior in remembrance of where it came from and therefore it would be a sort of evolution of his project, like a new object of desire,” Chiuri said of the Lady 95.22. But how to update a classic, one so cherished by so many? For Chiuri, the answer lay in reconsidering volumes and shapes, and in an embrace of innovative processes. Her Lady 95.22 is a celebration of craft, of making things in new ways.

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“So, my idea was to have a shape that was more rounded, more welcoming,” she explained. “And I also liked the idea of playing with these references like the Cannage motif with new technologies.”

Chiefly among those new technologies mastered here is the use of high-frequency waves to work cuts of leather into macro – and new maxi-cannage patterns. Handles now come finished in metal and leather. The new Lady 95.22 is available in a trio of sizes, from small to large, and in a choice of black or milky white “latte” hues. See dior.com