Dior and UNESCO came together with a single voice during the third UNESCO & Women@Dior Global Conference at UNESCO House in Paris. The event celebrates themes at the heart of the Women@Dior mentoring and educational program, created to help young women build a better future.

The agenda highlighted the program’s five core values – self-care and self-awareness, autonomy, inclusion, creativity and sustainable development – with workshops led by professionals and insights shared by engaged and inspiring women.

Chantal Gaemperlé (LVMH Group Executive Vice President Human Resources and Synergies), Emmanuelle Favre (Christian Dior Couture SVP Human Resources), Stefania Giannini (UNESCO Assistant Director-General for Education) and Dior Mentors and Mentees were joined by this edition’s guests of honor, singer-songwriter Imany and socially-committed Afghan photographer Fatimah Hossaini, as participants shared their visions and commitments for the emancipation of women.

An exceptional jury chaired by Dior Artistic Director Maria Grazia Chiuri also announced the winners of the Dream For Change Project. Part of the Women Leadership & Sustainability Education Program – the educational platform launched by Women@Dior last year – this initiative invites Mentees to support the empowerment of young girls at the local level to foster the emergence of talented women.

Launched in 2017, Women@Dior has already provided support for thousands of young women from 25 countries around the world studying at business, engineering, art and fashion schools.

The Women@Dior program carries on the longstanding engagement of the celebrated Paris fashion house. In 1955, Christian Dior spoke to over 4,000 students in the Grand Amphithéâtre of the Sorbonne. His remarks – a dialogue with French civilization professor Jacqueline de Menou – were followed by a fashion show.

A special replay of the conference has been posted on the Women@Dior platform.

Maison Hennessy is delighted to welcome “L’Ombre des Heures, Le Retable du Temps”, a work commissioned from artist Jeremy Demester specifically for the Atelier de Tonnellerie, Hennessy’s barrel-making workshop at its historic home in Cognac, in the Charente region.

The Hennessy Atelier de Tonnellerie, its barrel-making workshop, represents the passing on of ancestral savoir-faire.  Emblematic of Hennessy’s history and values, it embodies the cognac maker’s incomparable know-how and the hand-crafted intelligence behind making and conserving barrels of exceptional sizes in which eaux-de-vie are aged. For more than two centuries, the Maison’s coopers have passed on a love of skilled handiwork, knowledge of materials and skillful use of tools to craft barrels entirely by hand.

Reconnecting with the original barrel-making workshops, the new Atelier marks a return to the banks of the Charente river in the heart of Cognac, carrying on the sharing and perfection of remarkable savoir-faire centered on excellence. To celebrate this ethos, Hennessy commissioned a monumental work by artist  Jeremy Demester. Entitled “L’Ombre des Heures, le Retable du Temps” (The Shadow of the Hours, The Altarpiece of Time), the piece is above all the fruit of an encounter between artist and artisans around all that unites them – handmade craftsmanship, the mystery of materials and the changes imparted by time. Because they are the guardians responsible for passing on unique skills and intimate knowledge of materials, artisans nurture a deep and personal relationship with time.