Watch: Behind the Naked Alphabets at the Dior FW19 Show
Season after season, Maria Grazia Chiuri has anointed a different feminist artist as a totem for her Dior collections. For Fall 2019, it was Bianca Menna, better known as Tomaso Binga — the male pseudonym she adopted to disguise her gender within the male-dominated art world.
Binga was present at the Dior show at the Musée Rodin last Tuesday, where she recited one of her feminist poems to the guests. She was also all over the walls: nude photographs of the Italian artist lined the runway, each featuring her posing as an alphabet.
Together, Binga's "living writing" spelled out the lines of another one of her poems: "I'm a simple piece of paper. / I'm a stamped letter." Just like the clothes themselves, Dior's show set was chock full of feminist statements, driving Maria Grazia Chiuri's agenda home.
Below, watch the 88-year-old Tomaso Binfa explain how she first conceived the provocative photo series back in 1976, before delving deeper into her life as a feminist artist.
