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Welcome to the Dior Talks podcast series themed around the seventh edition of Dior Lady Art and hosted by Paris-based journalist Katya Foreman. For this year’s event, 11 artists from around the world have participated in a game of metamorphosis by rendering the iconic Lady Dior handbag as a unique piece of art.

“As a painter, you’re asking somebody to enter into your world,” says our latest guest, Shara Hughes. With her vibrant, imaginary, psychological landscapes, the Brooklyn-based painter likes to “go to the edge of something without explaining everything all of the way,” encouraging the viewer to stretch their own imagination. Her zeitgeist works convey a future that feels hopeful and exciting yet tinged with a feeling of uneasiness.

Hughes for her two creations explores the Lady Dior bag as a vessel, playing on the idea of seeing something from the outside and the inside at the same time. Portals give onto strange landscapes, “like a looking glass into another world.”

“Although it's not hand-painted, there is still something very handmade about them and coming straight from my ideas to the bag,” says the artist.

Based on her work ‘Prelude to the Future,’ the artist’s red Lady Dior bag explores the idea of an unknown future. Crafted from red velvet that absorbs light, the bag features a central strip adorned with a lush field of colourful, shiny flowers. “Maybe you would wear this on the red carpet,” says Hughes. “There's, like a bright red kind of curtain that gives you…an opening into this other world…like a portal into another world that is even better than where you are right now, standing as the viewer looking inside.” 

Covered in a tactile 3D rosebush embroidered with glittering beads, a multicoloured bag is based on a smaller painting titled ‘Midnight Hike.’ In the centre, a porthole opens onto a rocky, bushy landscape giving onto the sea, with a moon rising or setting in the background. “It's very green and gloomy, as if you are on a midnight hike,” says Hughes. 

Tune into the episode to learn all about Hughes’ fascinating universe and hear her take on the Dior Lady Art experience and “how fashion can be seen as art, not just something you wear every day.”