Dior’s Maria Grazia Chiuri Spotlights Women Making Waves in Mexico City

As a teen growing up in Rome, Maria Grazia Chiuri visited a Frida Kahlo exhibition that left an indelible impression. Looking beyond the surrealistic self-portraits on display, she became fixated on the Mexican artist’s idiosyncratic sense of style—a performative hallmark that defied gender, time, and place. “Frida Kahlo was probably the first woman artist I ever encountered,” Chiuri recalls. “She is so important, so iconic, because she had a strong relationship not only with her body but also with clothes—she really realized herself with clothes.” Little did Chiuri know, Kahlo’s metamorphosis would later inspire her to design an entire collection.

In 2016, when Chiuri made fashion history by becoming Christian Dior’s first female creative director, she delved into the Dior archives. “I discovered this incredible map that immediately explains why Dior is a global brand,” Chiuri says. “From the beginning of his career, Mr. Dior visited other parts of the world. In 1954, he went to Mexico with five models to present a collection. They moved the patternmaking to Mexico City and made the clothes there. Immediately there was a relationship between Dior and crafts around the world.”

Eager to contribute to this legacy, Chiuri began charting Dior’s return to Mexico, first shooting an editorial with the famed Mexican photographer Graciela Iturbide in Oaxaca and then basing the house’s 2019 cruise collection on the escaramuza—an all-female equestrian component of Mexican rodeos. Those experiences helped fuel Dior’s 2024 cruise collection, an expansive endeavor celebrating Kahlo, as well as Mexico’s rich artisanal heritage and long-standing love affair with magical realism. To bring the clothes to life, Chiuri traveled to Oaxaca, Puebla, and Mexico City to meet with local craftspeople. Through her research trips and contacts—including Circe Henestrosa, co-curator of the 2018 Victoria and Albert Museum exhibition “Frida Kahlo: Making Her Self Up”—Chiuri put together a dream team representing textile, jewelry, and millinery workshops.

Much like Kahlo’s own wardrobe, the resulting garments showcased age-old traditions while juxtaposing concepts old and new, Latin American and European. The iconic Dior Bar Jacket was treated to multiple interpretations, including a white version featuring colorful panels that the Oaxacan artist Narcy Areli Morales created with an embroidery technique known as pepenado fruncido. A sartorial mainstay since pre-Columbian times, the tuniclike huipil made several appearances, courtesy of Oaxacan weaver Remigio Mestas. Butterflies formed a thematic thread thanks to exquisite silver jewelry handcrafted by the Mexico City–based workshop Plata Villa. “The butterfly is a symbol that represents metamorphosis, and it’s present in all different cultures,” Chiuri says.

But beyond the collaborations and contemporary spins on Mexican traditions, the collection was, at its heart, a love letter to fearless women—Kahlo, Iturbide, the artist and activist Tina Modotti, and the Surrealist painter Leonora Carrington among them—who have shaped the way Mexico looks and feels today. “They are very independent, very artistic women—and they realized themselves,” Chiuri says. “I love everything about them.” To further that point, W and Chiuri assembled a group of five equally outspoken women who are making waves amid Mexico City’s ongoing cultural renaissance. While they focus on different disciplines, they are all using their work as a catalyst to effect positive change.

Silvana Estrada, Musician

Raised by luthiers in Veracruz, Silvana Estrada was destined to become a musician. She was around 6 years old when she started singing songs in the living room for her family, began performing at 13 at local music venues and theaters in her hometown, and went on to study jazz at Universidad Veracruzana at 16. During a break from school, she picked up her father’s Venezuelan cuatro, an instrument similar to the ukulele, and fell in love with it. Soon after, she met Charlie Hunter, a famed session musician, who invited her to New York for a crash course in jazz culture.

“I come from the Mexican countryside,” says Estrada. “Singing in New York jazz clubs, I was like, This is their folklore. I have my own folklore.” That realization led her to son jarocho, an Afro-Mexican genre from Veracruz. The jazzy signatures of her 2017 Charlie Hunter collaboration, Lo Sagrado, gave way to an intensely personal solo debut, 2022’s Marchita. “Son jarocho embraces the vulnerability of the human voice,” Estrada says. “It’s connected to sadness and pain.”

The tearjerker “Te Guardo” is an ideal introduction to Estrada’s style of musical storytelling. Another song, “Si Me Matan,” inspired by the 2017 murder of the 19-year-old student Mara Fernanda Castilla, who was abducted after using a ride-share app, has emerged as a battle cry protesting violence against women—and a mainstay that invigorates International Women’s Day marches around the world.

Last year, Estrada reached a career milestone when she tied with the Cuban singer Angela Alvarez—who was 95 years old at the time—for Best New Artist at the Latin Grammys. “It was so meaningful for us to win that prize together as women coming from Latin American folklore,” Estrada says. “I ended up having this huge moment—laughing and crying with her and her family.”

Elena Reygadas, Chef

Situated in a colonial mansion appointed with vintage furnishings, floral frescoes, and abundant greenery, Rosetta is among Mexico City’s buzziest eateries. While reservations have never been easy, they became even scarcer this year when the World’s 50 Best Restaurants named chef and proprietor Elena Reygadas the world’s best female chef.

Reygadas—who also owns the destination restaurants Lardo, Panadería Rosetta, Café Nin, and Bella Aurora—says the designation has sparked some touching exchanges. “One of the most beautiful things is how Mexican women took it very personally,” she says. “Like, seeing young girls come to Rosetta with their families—not just because of the award but because they want to become a chef someday.”

Reygadas spent four years working at London’s Michelin-starred Locanda Locatelli before opening Rosetta, in 2010. Inspired by Mexico’s biodiversity, she likens herself to a kid playing when it comes to using the wealth of ingredients at her fingertips: Cabbage tacos are a favorite at the Italian-inflected Rosetta; chilaquiles get topped with burrata at Lardo; red curry shares the menu with fish and chips at Café Nin. Her unapologetic love affair with bread is on full display at Panadería Rosetta—where fans line up in hopes of scoring some guava rolls before they sell out.

Reygadas is using her newfound fame to encourage the next generation of female chefs. In 2022, she launched a scholarship that provides financial aid to help with basic living expenses for young women attending culinary school. And in addition to running five restaurants, she is raising two teenage daughters. “It’s definitely a full plate, but my daughters appreciate that I follow my passion,” she says. “I’m very satisfied.”

Wendy Cabrera Rubio, Artist

Curious dichotomies abound in the work of artist Wendy Cabrera Rubio. Take, for example, her obsession with the 1944 Walt Disney film Los Tres Caballeros, which has served as fodder for her practice. Complete with live-action musical interludes, the animated classic follows Donald Duck; a Mexican rooster named Panchito Pistoles; and José Carioca, a Brazilian parrot, on a series of adventures. “It’s like Alice in Wonderland in Latin America,” Rubio says. “It’s a brilliant work of art, but it’s also super racist and macho.”

In addition to puppets, embroidered wall hangings, and mixed-media pieces, including a sculpture of Donald Duck donning Walt Disney’s face and dancing on a painting by Mexican Muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros, Rubio has created colorful yet critical work that reframes the Galápagos Islands expeditions of Charles Darwin and Herman Melville. Unveiled in Ecuador in 2022, her solo exhibition, “Bitácora Primera,” transformed Darwin’s and Melville’s bizarre wildlife descriptions into delightfully quirky felt creatures. One of the show’s highlights was a patchwork turtle large enough for Rubio to slip inside of. “I’m very interested in how these two foreigners described nature in Ecuador and created this fear of otherness,” she explains.

Controversial Mexican figures such as the politician and philosopher José Vasconcelos and the artist-writer José Luis Cuevas are also among Rubio’s historical references. Vasconcelos penned the 1925 essay “La Raza Cósmica,” which promoted racial homogeneity in Mexico, whereas Cuevas wrote the 1956 manifesto La Cortina de Nopal, which critiqued nationalism and Mexican Muralism. “I don’t love them and I don’t hate them,” Rubio says of the prickly themes she explores in her work. “For me, they all represent the contradictory nature of power.”

Elina Chauvet, Artist and Activist

It’s not often that a public art initiative takes on a life of its own—but that’s exactly what happened with Mexican feminist artist Elina Chauvet’s Zapatos Rojos. Inspired by the 1992 femicide of her sister, the project began in 2009 as an installation of 33 pairs of red shoes—each representing a victim—in Ciudad Juárez. Over the past 14 years, it has sparked dialogue about femicide in nearly every corner of the globe. “There have been more than 500 iterations around the world,” Chauvet says of Zapatos Rojos, which now often comprises more than 300 pairs of shoes. “It’s a situation that exists in all countries—there are no borders.”

“Elina is very well known in Italy, and it had long been a dream of mine to collaborate with her,” says Dior’s Maria Grazia Chiuri, who tapped Chauvet to create a live piece to close out Dior’s 2024 cruise collection show, in Mexico City. Working with a team of 16 women embroiderers, Chauvet stitched 20 Dior muslin dresses with phrases and symbols in red protesting violence against women. Titled “A Corazón Abierto,” the performance made for a cinematic finale as models wearing Chauvet’s embroidered garments stood defiantly in the rain while singer Vivir Quintana’s femicide protest anthem, “Canción Sin Miedo,” played in the background. “What Elina made was magnificent,” Chiuri says. “Our dream is to realize an exhibition of her artwork at the Dior Museum, in Paris.”

Though Chauvet clams up at the mention of a Paris exhibition, she’s forthcoming about the organization she recently launched, Elina Chauvet Zapatos Rojos A.C. “I want to generate more feminist art projects,” she says. “It’s very important to continue raising awareness—and I believe art has the power to do that.”

Zélika García, Cultural Entrepreneur

It’s always bustling, but Mexico City gets even busier the second week of February. The reason? Mexico City Art Week—an annual event packed with openings, dinners, and parties that can be traced back to the work of one woman: Zélika García.

García launched an art fair named Muestra in 2002; two years later, it had doubled in size and was quickly becoming a fixture known as Zona Maco (México Arte Contemporáneo). Over the past two decades, Zona Maco has grown into Latin America’s largest art fair, routinely uniting 200-plus galleries from Mexico City, New York, London, Berlin, and beyond. Once divided between February and September, its key components—contemporary art, design, antiques, and photography—now all converge during Mexico City Art Week and can involve everything from paintings by modern masters and Pop art icons to conceptual installations, Victorian furniture, indie zines, and tequila carts staffed by male models.

That wild diversity has played a vital role in Mexico City’s cultural growth. “When I started Zona Maco, local collectors didn’t have a lot of access to international art,” García recounts. “When we brought international galleries to Mexico City, the galleries started exchanging artists, and curators began discovering Mexican artists and doing exhibitions of their work outside of Mexico. Last year, we had 54 international museum boards visit us.”

Zona Maco’s 20th anniversary is in 2024, and although García asserts that the fair won’t be getting any bigger, the umbrella is still expanding. Inaugurated in 2023, García’s ABC Art Baja California is a hybrid festival encompassing two months of art, music, and food in San José del Cabo, Todos Santos, La Paz, Tijuana, and Ensenada. “It’s like a long gallery week in each city showcasing emerging and local artists,” García explains. “Culturally, there’s a lot happening in Baja.”

Zélika García: Hair by Ernesto Vargas; Makeup by Gustavo Bortolotti. Photo Assistant: Brenda Jimenez Jauregui; Fashion Assistant: Maria Villarreal. Silvana Estrada: Hair by Pilar Gutiérrez; Makeup by Liz Jardón. Photo Assistant: Hugo Nuñez; Fashion Assistant: Maria Villarreal. Elena Reygadas: Hair by Ernesto Vargas; Makeup by Gustavo Bortolotti. Fashion Assistant: Oscar Barragán. Wendy Cabrera Rubio: Hair by Ernesto Vargas; Makeup by Rocío Solloa. Photo Assistant: Hugo Nuñez; Fashion Assistant: Maria Villarreal. Elina Chauvet: Hair by Ernesto Vargas; Makeup by Gustavo Bortolotti. Photo Assistant: Brenda Jimenez Jauregui; Fashion Assistant: Maria Villarreal.