Christian Dior Newspaper Print Silk Jersey Dress by John Galliano (AW 2000)

Curator's Note

This dress is from Christian Dior's Autumn/Winter 2000–01 ready-to-wear collection, "Fly Girl," designed by John Galliano. The 60-look collection was staged on a gold-mirrored runway and drew on the imagery of newly wealthy young women and R&B culture, with Galliano citing Missy Elliott, Foxy Brown, Mary J. Blige and Lil' Kim as references.

The newspaper print itself carries a longer history. Elsa Schiaparelli produced the first version of the idea in 1935, commissioning a textile printed with press clippings about her own work. Galliano's Dior print, named "The Christian Dior Daily," was built around his own image and press coverage, reported at the time as a response to the criticism he had faced over his Spring/Summer 2000 Haute Couture collection the previous January. Sotheby's has since described the print as trompe-l'oeil newsprint reflecting "Galliano's own experiences in Paris and his fascination with media culture."

The print also arrived carrying the residue of that earlier collection. Galliano's Spring/Summer 2000 Haute Couture show, "Les Clochards," a 42-look collection referencing homelessness, opened with trousers printed with his own press coverage from the International Herald Tribune. The show was sharply criticised in the French and international press, and at the end of January 2000 protesters wearing bin liners gathered outside Dior's Avenue Montaigne boutique, forcing it to close under police attendance. When the newspaper print resurfaced weeks later in Fly Girl, cut into bias slips and dresses for a collection built around new money rather than social critique, it carried that controversy forward into a wholly different context.

The design reached a much wider audience later in 2000, when Sarah Jessica Parker wore a Dior by Galliano newspaper-print dress as Carrie Bradshaw in Sex and the City, Season 3, Episode 17, "What Goes Around Comes Around," and again in the 2010 film Sex and the City 2. Examples from the collection have since appeared at auction, including at Sotheby's, and the print was revisited by Kim Jones for Dior Men Spring/Summer 2020, reworked in white on sheer fabric with Galliano's face removed from the design.

Époque Couture's dress was worn by Alexandra Leclerc to the Madrid Grand Prix on 11 September 2026, styled with a Lady Dior bag and black mules.

Photo credit: @alexandramalenaleclerc