Orientalism and spaceships in Dior's show among the pyramids Kim Jones reinterprets Egyptian inspiration and sets one of this year's most spectacular shows

There is an ongoing controversy in the middle of the fashion press about the permissibility of exotic shows organized around the world by big brands. If during the regular fashion weeks half of the fashion industry takes a plane to Milan or Paris, to see the Pre-Fall and Cruise collections entire caravanserais made up of editors, buyers, celebrities and influencers have to fly from hundreds of different points around the globe, at great expense of money as well as use of fuel and other resources and therefore very high emissions to see, essentially, a collection of clothes of which perhaps only half will actually be produced. Someone said this about this very December that will see glitterati marching in Cairo for Dior, in Dakar for Chanel, in Los Angeles for Celine, in St. Mortiz for Pucci and Armani, and in Paris for Jacquemus. And while indeed fashion needs spectacle and grandeur (who remembers when Jacquemus flew hundreds of people to Hawaii for a beach show or every show Karl Lagerfeld organized for Chanel?) it is also true that in times of social responsibility the need to bring waste and emissions to zero clashes with the need to generate interactions, stimulate attention, and ultimately create interest in an event that, if it did not include for the guests a five-star stay in Cairo with a shower of gifts and celebrity proximity, would perhaps not capture all that much attention since, let's remember, in the end we are talking about clothes that only 0.01 percent of the public will actually be able to afford. Be that as it may, there are times when the different inspirations behind a certain show or collection guess, if nothing else, an aesthetic, a scenario, and Dior's last FW23 show in Cairo did just that.

And if choosing to cast a spotlight on the country is not tantamount to collaborating with the authoritarian regime in place since 2014, since no matter what the culture and monuments of Ancient Egypt are a heritage of all mankind, Dior's pharaonic show (the pun is intended, of course) is at a curious conjuncture of superlative aesthetics and mercantile ethics, so to speak, that returns a reflection of today's fashion, at once omnipotent, oversized, seeking attention and cultural prestigr, and rich as much in beauty as in contradictions, but above all eager to catch the eyes of that Arab clientele which, in the general contraction of consumption that is predicted for 2023, will be among the only ones to continue spending liberally on luxury. Perhaps it would be good, however, to take the spectacle at face value - after all, outside the avant-garde, a fashion shows may very well be a no brainer. Sometimes, to paraphrase Freud, a pyramid is just a pyramid.