Johan Creten Talks Celebrating the Lady Dior Through the Symbol of the Bee

Dior Lady Art

Welcome to the Dior Talks series themed around the sixth edition of Dior Lady Art and hosted by Paris-based journalist Katya Foreman. For this year’s event, 12 artists from around the world have participated in a game of metamorphosis by rendering the iconic Lady Dior handbag as a unique piece of art.

“A sculpture to be worn, to be transformed,” says our latest guest Johan Creten of his reinvented Lady Dior handbags, poetically entitled Love Games and imagined as symbols of a more respectful world.

Known for his work in ceramics and allegorical sculpture imbued with mystery, the Belgian-born artist looked to one of his favorite symbols, the bee, a symbol of utopian society, for his Dior Lady Art creations.

On an earthy brown suede leather base, a decoration of sand sealed with glossy resin evoking clay is adorned with a swarm of golden bees. This removable plastron reflecting the sculptor's fascination for the noble insect transforms the signature Dior ‘cannage’ motif into a precious ornament. A second royal blue bag by the artist is punctuated with hybrid embroidery adorned with handcrafted bees in different sizes, patinas, colors and forms reflecting exceptional Dior savoir-faire.

The idea, explains the artist, “is that it’s not finished, it’s open. You could even say, ‘why are there bees missing?’ Because you are a bee. He is a bee, she is a bee. We are all elements that have to interconnect to form something that may function. But it’s always a work that is unfinished.”

In an unexpected twist, the bags’ interiors are in gold, contrasting with the clay-inspired surfaces.

Concludes Creten of his Dior Lady Art journey: “For me, art is always a way of expressing a vision of how artists, and how we all, have to think about making a better world. And why not do it through the symbol of a bag?”