Flat tints reprising the colours of the Pan-African flag, punctuated by feminist texts, accompanied the cadenced stride of models dressed in antique draped dresses and moiré jacquard skirts. Having rediscovered the work of Faith Ringgold¹ in New York, in 2022, the Creative Director of Dior’s women’s collections became fascinated with the artist, whose anti-estab­lishment works champion a political vision of the female body.

Long ignored by the art world, this dazzling figure had the discreet charm and Olympian calm of those who have lived their lives fighting battles with an extra touch of soul. An existence spent, paintbrush in hand, denouncing racism and sexism in a society that stifles women – all the more so if they are artists, and Black. Faith Ringgold was born in Harlem in 1930, to a mother who was a seamstress and a father who was a truck driver, at a time when the United States was still under segregation. She taught art in underprivileged schools in her neighbourhood; decades later, she would be appointed professor emeritus at the University of California San Diego².

It wasn’t until the early 1960s, buoyed by the creative effervescence of New York City, that she drew attention for her American People series, militant paintings that brought hope to an entire generation living under racial antagonism and discrimination. The commitment continued with the founding, in 1999, of her Anybody Can Fly Foundation, which promotes African-American art in schools and museums. Faith Ringgold’s answer to problems of social injustice was art. In the form of monumental canvases and flamboyant colour. And when that didn’t suffice, she painted on fabric, creating her famed Tibetan-inspired thangkas.

Like a second skin. The result was quilts, magnificent patchworks trimmed with political messages. She made her first, Echoes of Harlem, in 1980, with her mother, Mrs. Willi Posey.

Having become a writer and lecturer, she dedicated herself to sharing her convictions with America’s youth, notably by publishing some 15 children’s books. In 1971, she took her daughter to the Whitney Museum of American Art in Manhattan. Not so much to visit an exhibition as to protest, fervently, placard in hand, the lack of representation of Black women artists in the institution’s collections.

In Paris, for the Dior autumn-winter 2024-2025 haute couture show, lettering from Freedom Woman Now embodied a universal declaration of gender equality. Immense mosaics of embroidered thread encircled the runway, in homage to the links between sports, fashion and art. The défilé was a manifesto, a love vow, for women who are free, independent and emancipated from the trappings of judgment or oppression. An ode to rebellion that echoed the words of Christian Dior: “Artworks answer me; they give me confidence. I like to feel their extension within me.”

Faith Ringgold left us on the eve of her 93^rd birthday, a few months before a last, bronze draped gown signalled the show’s finale. The audience rose. Forever etched, her words shimmered within us all: “You can’t just sit back and wait for someone else to tell you who you are. You have to write it and paint it and do it.”