Red is the colour this season: Dior has used it for its fox dresses in a new campaign photographed by Willy Vanderperre. 

New?  In construction, a little.  The main image does show two girls looking like furry sirens enticing their victims to the rocky shore. The designer Valentino Gavarani said that red was "the ultimate cure for sadness". The Great Whore of Babylon was attired in red and purple, sitting astride a scarlet beast in the Book of Revelations. Bette Davis as Jezebel in the eponymous film scandalised her peers by wearing red and Diana Vreeland wore a corsage of red camellias against her white frock at her coming out ball. Balenciaga, Schiaparelli, Dior, Chanel - all featured red in their work, but Valentino made that one poppy-coloured dress in each collection a trademark. Now Valentino's red dresses, photographed by many including Steven Meisel and Mert and Marcus are as iconic as the red robes worn by cardinals, immortalised by Titian and Raphael.

Maybe red is a cure for sadness. Derived from cochineal originally, it has varied from 'Scarlet' to 'Lustie Red', 'Incarnate', Gingerline', Bowdy', 'Brassel', 'Murrey', 'Pear' and 'Sanguin' - all these obsolete names for types of red in dress. And it  is Numero Uno in nature: we come into the world covered in red blood and if we are unlucky, we die in it. La Vreeland understood the traditional Chinese belief that red is auspicious, like fire, it symbolises good fortune and joy. 'All my life I’ve pursued the perfect red. I can never get painters to mix it for me. It’s exactly as if I’d said, ‘I want rococo with a spot of Gothic in it and a bit of Buddhist temple’—they have no idea what I’m talking about. About the best red is to copy the colour of a child’s cap in any Renaissance portrait.”

Dior selected the red ensembles to be used in this season's campaign. Selected are some other fur advertising campaigns, most memorable being the truly iconic Blackglama images by Richard Avedon, amongst others. So far, no advertisements, however, have included mention on sustainability, traceability or supply chain. This, surely, along with the red hot 'glamour', needs to happen next.

‘Miniver’ has all the gorgeous allusions to the age of chivalry, the medieval past and the courts of the Plantagenets and Valois. Fur in fashion repeats itself over and over again, from the white fox lining the robes of ‘Salome’ in the Byzantine Ravenna Mosaics to the mink that trimmed the robes of Henry VIII.