The glamour of France’s fashion industry hits Los Angeles Thursday as Dior lures a bevy of stars including Charlize Theron and Brie Larson to the Santa Monica mountains for its latest runway show.
The couture house’s 2018 cruise collection presentation will see attendees decamping to a remote reserve on the edge of the upscale suburb of Calabasas, home to Jennifer Lopez, the Kardashian-Jenners and much of Hollywood’s A list.
Dior took over Santa Monica seafood restaurant Gladstone’s on the eve of the show for a glitzy beachside party welcoming celebrities including “Slumdog Millionaire” star Frieda Pinto, and actresses Kiernan Shipka (“Mad Men”), Jaime King (“Sin City”) and Juno Temple (“Vinyl”).
The remote location for the runway show was chosen by Maria Grazia Chiuri, who was lured from Valentino in July last year to become Dior’s first female creative director of women’s haute couture and accessories.
The company has been building buzz for its “Dior Sauvage” collection with a series of Instagram videos and stills of the protected wildlife of the Santa Monica mountains and sneak-peeks at fitting sessions for the models in West Hollywood.
Long derided for flashiness or faded grunge, Los Angeles is increasingly being described as an upcoming center of global fashion.
Saint Laurent showcased its autumn-winter men’s collection and part of its women’s range in Hollywood last year in front of a host of stars including Ellen DeGeneres, Lady Gaga, Sylvester Stallone and Pamela Anderson.
Tom Ford revealed in March he was moving his women’s design headquarters to LA, while Louis Vuitton presented its cruise collection in the city in 2015 and Burberry presented at the Griffith Observatory, attended by Elton John and David and Victoria Beckham.
Experts say the fashion boom in Los Angeles stems as much from the city’s concentration of celebrities, whose social media influence is important to brands, as its cluster of garment manufacturers and wealth of creative talent.
Guests for the Dior show will board shuttles from Beverly Hills and Santa Monica to the wilderness of the Upper Las Virgenes Canyon Open Space Preserve, around 45 minutes away.
The meadows there were used from the 1920s to 1950s for filming Westerns and other movies, including “Gone with the Wind” (1939), “They Died with Their Boots On” (1941) and “Adventures of Don Juan” (1948).
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