To celebrate a decade of the Lady Dior bag, the French maison invited 10 global artists to reinterpret the iconic accessory through their own creative lens. Here are our top three picks.
Few fashion objects carry the weight of both history and reinvention quite like the Lady Dior. Originally named the Chouchou, the bag was created especially for Princess Diana during her visit to Paris in 1995 as a structured design in quilted black leather adorned with Dior’s gold charms. Upon its debut on her arm, it naturally became an instant icon. Launched in 2016, Dior’s Lady Art project took that legacy into a new era, inviting artists from around the world to reinterpret the iconic accessory through their unique perspective. Over the past decade, 99 artists have reimagined the bag, from sculptural experiments and digital abstractions to painterly reinterpretations that blur the boundary between fashion and fine art.
Now, as Dior celebrates 10 years of this collaboration, 10 new artists transform the Lady Dior once more, exploring light, memory, emotion and materiality. Through embroidery, pearls, paint and innovation, they prove that the bag is not just timeless but ever-evolving. To mark the Dior Lady Art project’s milestone, the luxury maison has also released a new book of the same name. Featuring more than 250 reinterpretations of the Lady Dior bag by 99 contemporary artists, the volume captures the dialogue between fashion, art and craftsmanship that has defined the project since its launch and celebrates the bag’s artistic evolution.
Jessica Cannon
Known for her ethereal studies of light and spiritual landscapes, Brooklyn-born painter Jessica Cannon brings a celestial vision to life across three luminous interpretations of the Lady Dior that seem to shimmer between sea and space. Each bag orbits around a glowing focal point – a sculpted sun, moon or planet – rendered in mother-of-pearl and surrounded by delicate beadwork that mimics the rhythm of waves. On one, muted pastels meet flashes of acid blue and iridescent green, giving the piece a vibrant aquatic energy. On another, a pearlescent shell spiral unfurls into lustrous crystals, with all displaying an incredibly intricate level of craftsmanship.
Marc Quinn
British visual artist Marc Quinn returns to the Dior Lady Art project a decade on, pushing boundaries with a collision of science, symbolism and luxury. He has created five unique designs: from Christian Dior’s own fingerprint transformed into gilded reliefs of varying sizes, to AI-generated human irises derived from a program trained on Quinn’s original iris paintings. Two other designs revive his signature orchid motif. Together, they blur the boundaries between craftsmanship and code.
Alymamah Rashed
Kuwaiti artist Alymamah Rashed’s two designs for Dior explore identity through landscapes rendered in intricate embroidery. One mimics the textures of the Failaka Island shoreline on the coast of Kuwait, glimmering with pearls and sand-like beading; while another blooms with Kuwait’s humaith flower. Each piece features an enamel eye and a poem hidden inside the lining – a message visible only to its owner.
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