Dior Lady Art Turns 10; Collaborates With Artist Ines Longevial
Call it the story of the decade.
We all know the Lady Dior story: First created in 1995 and famously named after the late Diana, Princess of Wales, it is to many in the fashion world a design legend. Its structured silhouette, cannage pattern and delicate charms have made it instantly recognisable and an early forerunner among It bags. So here’s the question: How does one reinvent an icon?
Dior’s answer arrived in 2016 with the Dior Lady Art initiative (let’s call it DLA for short): a yearly invitation for artists to take the Lady Dior and remake it entirely on their own terms. Before every brand was chasing “artist capsules” for TikTok virality, Dior was quietly building realness: a long‑running partnership model that treats artists as equals, giving them full creative freedom and the opportunity to have an open dialogue with its atelier.
For the milestone 10th edition of Dior Lady Art this year, Dior suitably invited 10 artists to be a part of the project, resulting in a total of 29 new takes on the Lady Dior. These limited‑edition designs include (top row, from left) a medium Lady Dior reimagined by New Yorker Patrick Eugene – known for his Haitian‑rooted portraits – with raffia and bamboo, a medium Lady Dior by Kuwait’s Alymamah Rashed with three‑dimensional petals inspired by a spring flower native to her home country, a medium Lady Dior by American artist Jessica Cannon that sparkles with celestial motifs and crystals; (middle row, from left) Brazilian painter Sophia Loeb’s jacquard knit small Lady Dior embellished with lurex and beads, the Paris‑born Eva Jospin’s medium Lady Dior with an embroidered landscape as well as an element inspired by the balconies of the brand’s headquarters at 30 Avenue Montaigne, Marc Quinn’s glossy small Lady Dior embedded with pins featuring irises generated by artificial intelligence; (bottom row, from left) South Korean minimalist artist Lee Ufan’s monochromatic small Lady Dior, a mini Lady Dior by the Beijing‑based Ju Ting that is enlivened with kinetic‑inspired stripes as well as balloon charms, and a metallic leather mini Lady Dior by Londoner Lakwena Maciver that carries the cheeky message “Carry Me”.
This is why this year’s edition matters: It’s the 10th – a rare example of a collaboration series that has both longevity and integrity. At a moment when luxury is shifting away from loud logos and turning its focus instead to craft, storytelling and cultural cachet, DLA feels less like a marketing project and more like a living archive that tracks how an icon can evolve without losing its soul.
This milestone edition, its pieces available in limited quantities in Dior stores now, is extra major. Ten artists from around the world – Jessica Cannon, Patrick Eugene, Eva Jospin, Ju Ting, Lakwena Maciver, Lee Ufan, Sophia Loeb, Ines Longevial, Marc Quinn and Alymamah Rashed – have been roped in to reinterpret the Lady Dior through their own visual universes, which span sculpture, minimalism, digital culture, textile craft and more.
The 35-year-old French painter Ines Longevial (above) is one of 10 artists who have been enlisted for the 10th edition of Dior Lady Art (DLA). Known for her dreamy portraits that blend cubist influences with a watercolour-esque softness, her sunlit, soulful figures have made her a cult favourite across both the art and fashion worlds – and turn up on the three designs she created for the 2025 DLA project. There’s a medium version of the Lady Dior that features a patchwork of 20 of her most iconic portraits rendered in fabric and embellished with a crown of ostrich feathers (above, on the left); a mini Lady Dior with the same patchwork, but embroidered all over with pearls and crystals (above, on theright); and a medium Lady Dior with a print of a blue woman’s face.
The result is a joyfully chaotic spectrum of perspectives. French painter Longevial, for example, has transformed the bag with kaleidoscopic patchworks of embroidered faces, while British artist Quinn (yes, he starred in the very first DLA edition) returns with five new bags, each featuring metallic orchids, irises generated by artificial intelligence, or sculptural fingerprints based on Monsieur Dior’s.
If the Lady Dior is the icon, then the DLA project is the experiment that adds a playful element to it – proof that heritage doesn’t have to stay still and that reinvention, when done consistently and courageously, only sharpens the myth. Here, Longevial shares more in an exclusive interview on her works for this 10th edition of DLA.
DESCRIBE YOUR ARTISTIC UNIVERSE IN THREE WORDS. “Free, instinctive, overflowing.”
WHAT INFLUENCES HAVE SHAPED YOUR ART AND YOUR CREATIVE VISION? “Everything. The intimate. Anything that pushes the boundaries of reality. I don’t really like giving references because they change all the time. If I had to choose a book and a song right now, it’d be Nouvelles Orientales by Marguerite Yourcenar and Silver Springs by Fleetwood Mac. But if I had to choose yesterday or tomorrow, they’d be different!”
WHAT DO YOU CONSIDER TO BE THE MOST EMBLEMATIC WORKS IN YOUR UNIVERSE? “Works where the body, memory and gesture intertwine. Where the moment is captured, and where the material speaks louder than words.”
The third Lady Dior designed by Longevial: a medium Lady Dior with a print of a blue woman’s face. It was produced using a technique known as relief embroidery – where threads are sewn in multiple directions, resulting in a raised and highly tactile effect – then further hand-embroidered with star motifs in multiple colours.
WHAT DOES DIOR REPRESENT TO YOU? “A place where elegance dares. Where we still believe that a detail can change the world. Where grace is combined with a bold, feminist vision of fashion.”
WHAT DO YOU LIKE MOST ABOUT THE LADY DIOR BAG? “The line is just right; it’s a quiet, almost Zen object. It’s a timeless, effortless, seasonless bag. The bag of all bags!”
TELL US MORE ABOUT HOW YOU’VE REINTERPRETED IT? WHAT WERE YOUR SOURCES OF INSPIRATION? “For one, I wanted my Lady Dior bags to be joyful, playful and exuberant. As a child, I watched my grandmother assemble fabrics with infinite patience. Patchwork has always been part of my imagination. So I worked on an assemblage of faces and details, such as flowers, suns and snakes. The softness and bouncy texture of the quilted satin add a friendly vibe to the designs.”
WHAT EXPERTISE DID YOU WANT TO HIGHLIGHT AND WHAT MATERIALS WERE USED? “First of all, I wanted to work with patchwork. We tested several fabrics, quilting techniques and embroidery to achieve a balanced result. For the medium Lady Dior featuring the blue woman’s face, we used relief embroidery (a technique that raises parts of the design above the fabric surface, creating a three‑dimensional, textured effect) and a very tactile approach to the materials. We also used a new thread embroidery technique with multi‑directional crossings that allow for subtle tonal variations … What interested me about this was that the embroidery could mirror and reproduce my brushstrokes. Every detail invites you to touch it.
THIS INTERVIEW HAS BEEN EDITED FOR BREVITY AND CLARITY
This article first appeared in Volume 5 of F Zine.