In Praise
of Reverie:
Yuriko Takagi

The book Dior by Yuriko Takagi² reveals the vibrant energy of fabric as a sensory extension of the body, magnifying its form and motion. Over time, the unique alchemy, the DNA of the House of Dior becomes tangible. Looks created by the founding couturier and his successors choreograph a graceful ballet, echoing Christian Dior’s wish: “Fashion, mysterious and unexpected, becomes once again, thanks to an element of the unknown, one of the last refuges of the marvellous.”¹

Yuriko Takagi has exhibited her work all around the world, notably at the Christian Dior: Designer of Dreams retrospective at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, from 2022 to 2023. For this new opus, the photographer continues her dialogue with the House of Dior by visiting 30 Montaigne, the House’s iconic address in Paris. “Her eye captures fragments of the building that has stood here for so long, like memories that suddenly take shape,” observes her friend, the Japanese artistic director Kazuko Koike, in the book’s preface.

Before Yuriko Takagi’s lens, toiles come to life as graceful blueprints for dresses in a ballet where accessories play the leading roles. The depth and magnetic power of her black-and-white prints are echoed in other photos where the resonance of red imparts a gracious, regal sheen.

A fully fledged artist, Yuriko Takagi combines photography with painting and drawing. All the pieces photographed here belong to the Dior Heritage archives. From the toile for the Bar suit, the signature emblem of the New Look designed for the spring-summer 1947 haute couture collection, to that of the pleated Claude skirt designed by Maria Grazia Chiuri for the autumn-winter 2020-2021 haute couture collection and one for a jacket designed by John Galliano for the spring-summer 2009 haute couture collection, Dior creations seem to transcend time and take flight with the models’ every graceful leap.

Like a subtle link between Creative Directors, flowers feature prominently in the photographer’s dreamscape. Yuriko Takagi is passionate about flowers, as was Christian Dior, who wrote in his memoirs: “After women, flowers are the most divine creations.”³

Yuriko Takagi has the same appeal: one of her exhibitions in 2014 was entitled Sei ­– a plunge into the carnal and sensual aesthetics of flower buds, each evoking a kanji, a Japanese character with 28 meanings capable of depicting all the stages of life, or even the entire universe. That philosophical approach permeates every image in the book Dior by Yuriko Takagi.

Like Christian Dior, who found boundless inspiration in nature – from his early years in Granville, Normandy, to later ones in Montauroux, in Provence – Yuriko Takagi eventually left Tokyo to settle in the mountains of Karuizawa. Inside a house open to the surrounding landscape, which serves as both her home and studio, the walls and floors are painted not in white, but in a special shade of inky black called sumikuro, which enhances texture, material, contrast and emotion, and creates a kind of parallel world that opens up endless possibilities for escape.

Page after page, the past intertwines with the present, and beauty infuses toiles and dresses like an intensely poetic celebration of the vision of Christian Dior, the “master of dreams”.