Just after taking in the Ready To Wear Spring-Summer 2018 show, Julia Trotta spoke about the provocation and irony behind the title of the essay “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” written by her grandmother Linda Nochlin and published in 1971.
A year ago, Maria Grazia Chiuri launched her debut collection for Dior, declaring a traditionally and not really Dior message “We Should All Be Feminists”, inspired by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s famous contemporary speech about feminism for Nigeria women.
To get obvious the Dior’s Creative Director – the first woman designer in brand’s 70-years history – asked for Spring Summer 2018 collection: “WHY HAVE THERE BEEN NO GREAT WOMEN ARTISTS”.
The second-wave feminist or art historians know the origin of Maria Grazia Chiuri’s question: a 1971 essay by art historian and critic, Brooklyn-based Linda Nochlin. American ArtNews called the essay as “one of the most famous and seminal essays of postwar art history.” Nochlin’s granddaughter, a filmmaker Julia Trotta worked with Dior on SS18 collaboration, with a copy of the original essay distributed to fashionistas in the crowd.
Julia Trotta shared her personal thoughts on combining branding with feminism in an email on her grandmother’s behalf: “It’s happening regardless of what we think,” she wrote. “But I guess it’s better to try to take advantage of that interest and embrace all the questions and complications that come up in hopes to deepen and expand the feminist conversation. And then it’s up to us (feminists) to hold those brands accountable for the messages they project.”
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