In the fifth partnership between OMA and Dior that follows Dior: From Paris to the World at the Denver Art Museum (2018) and Dallas Museum of Art (2019) and Christian Dior: Designer of Dreams at Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo (2022), a scenographic narrative in Seoul, South Korea, highlights over 70 years of the luxury brand. In this iteration of Christian Dior: Designer of Dreams, the reinvented exhibition space by OMA positioned within the Dongdaemun Design Plaza (DDP) meshes the creative legacy of Dior with Korea’s cultural heritage. Involving architecture, objects, materials and techniques alluding to both and contributions from Korean artists are woven into the spatial, material and colour palettes of the thematic rooms. “With no rooms or walls, DDP’s Art Hall and its vast, open expanse gave us carte blanche to expand on our scenographic approach conceptually and spatially. Thematic rooms are playfully scaled and shaped to create a rhythmic journey,” says Shohei Shigematsu, OMA partner, in an official press statement.

Unlike the layouts of traditional museum galleries, DDP’s Art Hall 1 offered a seamless, column-free space for the designers to experiment with. With this openness as a unique advantage, the exhibition design unfolds as a unified narrative in lieu of a series of segregated spaces. The OMA team, referencing the spatial semantics of traditional Korean hanok—a traditional, wood-framed house with ceramic roof tiles—formulated the exhibition around a large central space, monikered the Garden. Serving as the madang, or the hanok’s open-air courtyard, the Garden is conceived as an inhabitable moon jar, a porcelain vessel created by throwing, then joining two hemispherical halves to evoke a full moon. Within the 12-metre-tall lunar space, a textured hanji paper landscape of trees, flowers, butterflies and leaves by Korean artist HyunJoo Kim takes over.

Smaller galleries around the Garden create a rhythmic procession of contrasting entities: organic and geometric, light and dark, soft and rigid. “Smaller, intimate rooms lead into oversized scenes—walking on a Parisian street, inside a skirt or a jar, a tunnelling cabinet, lost in an infinite archive, stepping into a surreal spiral stair—enveloping the viewer in the world of Dior,” Shigematsu shares in his statement.

The journey into the expansive show begins with 30 Avenue Montaigne, where the legacy of the House of Dior is kindled through its historic facade, reproduced nearly to scale. Archival images from the atelier printed on pellucid scrim trace a rich timeline and create a layered set design. Additionally, the vaulted corridor transitions into a room occupied by black and white garments against a painted gradient backdrop: New Look. The eight-metre-tall curved metal structure—reminiscent of the Corolle skirt from the original Dior collection (1947)—presents earlier iterations of the tailleur bar on either end. Miss Dior, an extension for Miss Dior: Stories of a Miss exhibition (Tokyo, 2024), is a new addition to Designer of Dreams. Delicately embroidered tapestries by French artist Eva Jospin embellish a classical dome structure; an adjunct circular room expands the display through artefacts linked to the iconic scent.

Through the serene Garden, visitors are ushered into a ‘colour wheel’, Colorama. Objects and artefacts donned in primary colours occupy the centre of the room, while those in a spectrum of secondary shades are arranged around them; all elements affixed to mirrored louvres interact in a transparent and reflective setting. From this kaleidoscopic ambience, visitors transition into a space of immaculate whites: The Dior Ateliers. Here, the white toiles from the Dior Atelier are suspended from the ceiling in a volume of mirrored surfaces—an infinite field of toiles.

Carrying forward the series of thematics employing objects of cultural significance, Dior Legacy traces the timeline of the House’s creative directors with a single, meandering ‘ribbon’ crafted using the textile technique of jogakbo—emphasising the continuity between the individual eras. The Lady Dior section invites several Korean artists to interpret the classic Lady Dior bag, taking cues from traditional Korean red lacquerware cabinetry, where repeated modules form a sculptural and immersive experience.

Further in the exhibition space, a gold Versailles Hall of Mirrors highlights the J’Adore perfume bottles and garments against the backdrop of the latest campaign. Perfume bottles and sculptures designed by Jean-Michel Othoniel represent the artistic collaboration between the French artist and the fragrance. From J’Adore, visitors move to Stars in Dior, an offering of garments worn by famous figures under the spotlight. The meticulously lit cable surfaces drench the room in a captivating effect. The final showcase is a surrealist interpretation of the historic staircase of 30 Avenue Montaigne: The Dior Ball. A twisting staircase becomes a grand display with integrated platforms, allowing viewers to observe the luxury design from multiple perspectives. The curving staircase stands in harmony with an artwork by artist Soo Sunny Park.

Through the multifarious spaces, one flowing into another, the immersive exhibition features a variety of visual languages, display strategies and materialities to enhance the relationship between the viewer and the showcase. Layered scrims, mirrored louvres, suspended toiles and metal cables place garments, artworks and artefacts in shifting lights while foregrounding the cross-pollination between the brand’s oeuvre and Korean heritage. Transparency, openness and reflections foster dynamic dialogues between the objects on display, responding befittingly to the multi-faceted and ever-evolving identity of Dior.