A fashion protester crashed the dior spring 2021 show Favorite 

PARIS — At the end of the Dior fashion shown in Paris last September, a woman got up from the audience and walked down the runway carrying a yellow banner painted with the words “We Are All Fashion Victims.”

Maria Grazia Chiuri, creative director of women’s collections at Dior, frequently uses her runway as a platform for feminist slogans, such as “Patriarchy = Repression.” Was this a way to question the meaning of the fashion system during the coronavirus pandemic?

“You couldn’t tell if it was part of the show or not,” Sidney Toledano, chairman and chief executive officer of LVMH Fashion Group, commented afterward. As it turned out, the protester was a member of climate action group Extinction Rebellion, which had previously disrupted London Fashion Week with a series of demonstrations.

The moment illustrated the extent to which fashion and activism have become entwined in a year marked by widespread upheaval, from the global lockdowns designed to curb the spread of COVID-19, to the Black Lives Matter protests and a divisive U.S. presidential election.

“Fashion as activism was stronger than ever in 2020,” fashion search engine Lyst said in its “Year in Fashion 2020” report. “From shopping Black-owned businesses to Michelle Obama’s famous ‘Vote’ necklace, clothes and accessories expressed views on social and political issues.”

Benjamin Simmenauer, professor at the Institut Français de la Mode, said the Dior incident could be seen as a watershed moment. “It wasn’t the first time a fashion show was disrupted by a protester, but it was the first time that people were not sure what they’d seen,” he remarked.

He noted that until recently, luxury brands generally refrained from getting involved in political and social issues. “Once they take a stance, it reverberates,” he said. “If the show itself can take the form of a militant protest, how can you justify excluding a real activist from the event?”

Speaking two months later, Chiuri appeared to bear no grudge against the gate-crasher. “I would have liked to meet her, because I’m very interested in her point of view. I think it’s true: what she wrote is not so strange,” she said, adding that the protester vanished after the show.

“I think the whole system has understood that it has to participate, to be more cautious about what we do with what we produce, how much we consume,” Chiuri said. The difficulty, she added, is how to move toward a more sustainable pace of production while preserving the thousands of jobs along the fashion supply chain. “I’m no hypocrite. We are in a capitalist world, and it’s not easy to change,” she reflected.

When Chiuri joined Dior in 2016, she was the first woman to take the design reins in the history of the French fashion house. From her first show, she made her values clear by sending out a T-shirt with the message “We Should All Be Feminists.” Since then she has consistently promoted female creatives, and the brand’s sales have soared.

“For me, feminism is super important. I speak in a particular way from a point of view of women, because it is something that is more close with my personal story,” Chiuri said.