An invitation made its way to my inbox this week. "Discover Dior’s foremost quality: audacity" it read. Dior, The Art of Color, a travelling exhibition, will make its way to Dubai on April 12. Model-of-the-moment and brand ambassador of Dior Beauty Bella Hadid will be in attendance, as will the house’s creative director for make-up Peter Philips.
Like its namesake coffee-table book published in October, the exhibition will explore the brand’s passion for colour. This is illustrated in photographs showcasing the dozen key shades that have inspired iconic looks by Dior’s three most influential make-up artists over the years.
The brand’s penchant for beauty began in the late 1940s, with its Rouge Dior lipsticks. The startling shades of scarlet and orange went on to become staple part of Dior’s famed New Look.
In the 1960s, Serge Lutens, Dior Beauty’s first image director for make-up, took the brand’s love for colour further with his flamboyant and highly stylised approach to make-up: all smokey eyes and two-tined lips. The year 1980 saw design director Tyen take over the reins. Known for his love for vibrant hues and inspired by nature, Tyen’s make-up was all about red roses blooming around the eye and lips that evoked crushed purple grapes. Current make-up director Peter Philips upheld the kaleidoscopic mantle with his playful yet intuitive approach to colour: a lip may be green or yellow, but it’ll be balanced by nude eyes.
The exhibition will highlight the contents of the book, with blow-ups of campaign looks that tie-in to the house’s 12 key colours: white, silver, nude, pink, red, purple, blue, green, yellow, gold, grey, and black. These images, in turn, are set against the great works of art that their colours evoke: from Cocteau’s linear black lines and Rothko’s abstract sunsets to the radical colour schemes found in pieces by Pablo Picasso and Andy Warhol.

Source: The National