Lace

Lace is unquestionably predominant in Dior Couture SS17 by Maria Grazia Chiuri.

The ex-Valentino designer takes her inspiration from a journey into a forest full of spells and mythological creatures, something between Alice in Wonderland and Shakespeare’s imagination.

The collection felt like a wander into the forest of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, where lovers chase each other down mossy pathways and the queen of fairies casts her spells.

— Maria Grazia Chiuri

Napoleon made the lace mandatory to wear at his court.

Also known as “crochet” and “tatting”, there are two technical categories of lace: needle lace (derived from embroidery), and bobbin or pillow lace (where the thread is wound around the bobbins and then woven over a drum-shaped cushion).

Lace made its first appearance in late sixteenth century in Venice (needle lace) and Flanders (bobbin lace), spreading then to France, Britain, Spain and Switzerland. Finally, in nineteenth-century in Nottingham, England, the first lace machines were invented.

Traditionally, the fabric’s transparency was created by drawing on the threads on a linen base, then the machines embroider directly onto a light mesh structure.

Even if lace was also used in men’s clothing in the eighteenth century, in the nineteenth it became an exclusively female fabric – and has never gone out of fashion: each designer who used it, managed to create something different and new.

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