Tia-Thuy Nguyen was invited to co-operate with The House of Dior to create a work of art from the Lady Dior bag in January 2024. The work is part of the Lady Dior As Seen By global artistic collaboration project.

It takes the form of a traveling exhibition, traveling through many cities, displaying works in which Dior collaborates with artists to sketch a picture that reflects the creative context. internationally, transcending principles and borders. This special collaboration is also initiated to honor founder Christian Dior's passion for art.

Contemporary artists who have collaborated on this project include Mircea Cantor, Jeffrey Gibson, Gilbert & George, Ha Chong-Hyun, Lee Kun-Yong, Mariko Mori, Ludovic Nkoth, Hilary Pecis, Mickalene Thomas, Zadie Xa, Michaela Yearwood-Dan and Xu Zhen.

Cloud, quartz, hand-applied and Tia-Thuy Nguyen

Following the invitation, Tia-Thuy Nguyen spent time carefully researching the Lady Dior bag from a creative perspective and started making sketches on paper. Still choosing colourful clouds as creative inspiration and hand-applied making as her mark, Tia-Thuy Nguyen created a 3D prototype in clay. This was how she could accurately visualise the structure and proportion of the work in real space.

The Vietnamese artist explains choosing quartz as the main material for the work because of its meaning. As in feng shui, quartz is a stone that balances qi, helps calm the mind, crystallizes one's thoughts and eliminates negative emotions. From an aesthetic perspective, quartz resembles clouds, allowing light to pass through, bending its direction to reflect its surroundings. The contrast between the solidity of quartz and the airiness of clouds can challenge the viewer's imagination, leading to open-ended personal contemplation.

The quartz crystals are chosen to form a cloud surrounding the bag becomes a super difficult problem not only because of the difficulties in finding the right quartz block but also because of the extremely complicated attachment process.

To find the right block of stone that meets the desired clarity, hardness and size, Nguyen and her colleagues had to go to visit quarries from Yen Bai, Da Nang, Dak Lak to Ha Tien, and even abroad. Each place's soil will create quartz rocks with different colours, smoky levels and irradiance properties. The most suitable stone block to make Lady Cloud - a 103kg crystal was found in Phan Thiet.

Next, the stone sculptures were created and the large stone blocks were divided into hundreds of thousands of tiny quartz crystals with different angles and colours. The cutting and polishing was all done entirely by hand. After classification, Tia-Thuy Nguyen and the artisans began the process of attaching stones to create a gentle, flexible cloud with colour changes from light to dark surrounding Lady Cloud.

When art combines with fashion

Nguyen said she and her collaborators thought it would not be possible to complete the work due to time constraints and technical barriers.

Utilising the power of light to highlight the work, creating a unique message for each viewer, Lady Cloud is covered with thousands of quartz crystals meticulously arranged according to colour and texture. Under the lights, it will bring different feelings to viewers based on each moment and each angle.

“Dior researched and followed my artistic journey and found similarities, now is the right time for both sides to work together," Nguyen shared. "This combination is not only a collaboration to adapt a Dior icon but also an intersection between two design thoughts and philosophies. I bring my signature aesthetic and spontaneous personality, and Dior represents exemplary elegance with its classic bag shape. For me, this is my destiny with a timeless symbol. I am very happy that we have more opportunities to meet and interact with the diversity of the world. Through this exhibition, I hope the audience and my colleagues will see a new possibility, a new way of expression and motivate us to move forward together."

When talking about this unexpected collaboration, the artist expressed: "This project has shown us that Vietnamese artists and art no longer isolated. I feel very happy that we have more opportunities to meet and interact with a diverse world. Through this exhibition, I hope my audience and colleagues will see new possibilities, a new way of expression, and motivate us to move forward together."