December 23, 2024 |
The tweed-liveried doorman standing guard at the palatial entrance to the Gleneagles Hotel opens its polished brass door with a flourish and offers warm words of welcome in a honeyed Scottish brogue. A slender blonde, decked out head to toe in dazzling white Dior, expertly navigates the steps in her kitten slingbacks and murmurs her thanks as she slips inside. She keeps her oversized black sunglasses on, but there’s no mistaking that pout. Hollywood’s own Anya Taylor-Joy is here at Gleneagles, Scotland’s ‘glorious playground’. Across the verdant lawns, criss-crossed by well-to-do golfers in pastel knits and belted slacks, another familiar figure is striking a pose with a bow and arrow. Bryanboy – rocking an embroidered knit, pearls and tailored shorts with a cute tulle frill at the knee – is taking an archery class.
This is what happens when the Dior powerhouse lands in Scotland. You get Suzy Menkes on the croquet lawn, Jennifer Lawrence being serenaded by bagpipes, Emma Raducanu eating tomato tartare in a 15th-century castle and, the morning after, there’s former Spice Girl Geri Halliwell-Horner waiting patiently on the platform before hopping on an LNER train back to London. You know what they say about fashion being a fairytale, a fantasy world? Yup, they are talking about the cruise shows.
In the international arms race of the cruise calendar, with luxury brands vying to stage the most lavishly glamorous destination shows, the genteel rolling hills of Perthshire, chosen by Maria Grazia Chiuri for Dior’s cruise 2025 collection, did not seem, on paper, a natural favourite to come out on top. Surely the land of shortbread and frequent downpours could no compete with the snazzier choices of Barcelona or Venice? But Dior’s Scottish extravaganza, which took in not one but two Game of Thrones-worthy castles over 36 hours, proved to be perhaps the grandest spectacle of the cruise season. Who needs the Mediterranean when a June evening in Scotland is mild and the sky is a dazzling blue, with the golden hour coming close to midnight?
It is almost 70 years since the brand last came to Scotland. In May 1955, Christian Dior chartered a plane to carry eight models and 172 looks from his Paris atelier to Gleneagles, where a raised catwalk was constructed for the occasion down the length of the mirrored ballroom of the hotel. Eight years after his victorious New Look collection, Dior was the darling of Princess Margaret, toast of the town, the most famous fashion designer in the world. Everyone wanted to be there and tickets sold to raise money for the Friends of France, a charity for stranded French servicemen set up in Glasgow during WWII, were snapped up by the lairds and ladies of Scottish society. The show was front-page news across the country. But it was the traditional dancing afterwards that Dior remembered when writing his autobiography. “After the show, there was an unexpected contrast which delighted my French eyes: the parade of girls in their delicate evening dresses was succeeded by reels danced by magnificent Scottish gentlemen in their kilts,” he wrote in Dior by Dior, first published in 1956.
A series of snaps taken at that afterparty by a local photographer caught Maria Grazia Chiuri’s imagination. Chiuri, insightful at identifying connections between Dior and the broader culture, was already mulling over what she saw as an affinity between the stiff, sculpted tailoring and pleated skirts of the New Look and the tweed tailoring and kilts of Scottish ceremonial dress. The images of a smiling Christian Dior watching the Scots stamping and spinning on the dancefloor made a strong impression on her. Emilie Hammen, Chiuri’s research right hand, remembers that the photos captured “a moment of joyful cultural exchange between Dior couture and Scottish sartorial traditions that Maria Grazia was inspired to reproduce today.” An initial plan to take this cruise show back to the Gleneagles ballroom hit the buffers when Dior realised that the room was much too small for the 550 guests on its invite list. But with guidance from Justine Picardie – sometime Scotland dweller, author of several books about Dior and Chanel, and a close friend and collaborator of Chiuri – the gardens of nearby Drummond Castle were secured for the show
Having travelled by train – so civilised – it is a late Sunday afternoon in early summer when I arrive at Gleneagles Hotel. A scoreboard in the lobby informs me that the biggest catch recorded that day was a rainbow trout weighing 2lbs and that 43 clays were hit in the ‘royal shooting challenge’. Good to know. I’m a little distracted by Maisie Williams and Rosamund Pike, who are checking in alongside me. I gaze out of my hotel room window at the countryside from inside a deep bath, with a mug of tea and a biscuit – bliss – by my side. I change for dinner (it is most definitely that sort of hotel) and descend the grand staircase to The Strathearn restaurant, where the welcome feast is being held.
The night has a vintage, cruise-ship glamour, appropriate for a hotel that opened in the Roaring Twenties. (On 7 June 1924, almost a century to the day before this dinner, the opening of Gleneagles was deemed so important that it was broadcast live on BBC Radio Four.) There is a caviar station and white-hatted chefs serve slivers of Scottish lobster. Live music from the grand piano fills the room and the well-dressed crowd spill out of flung- open garden doors to sip their Ruinart champagne on the lawn. Even in this chic crowd, the elegant figure of Eiesha Pasricha stands out, as she welcomes guests to the hotel that she and her husband Sharan have returned to vogue since buying it. (The Pasrichas also own Mayfair members’ club Maison Estelle. They have pots of money, and exquisite taste.) Bureau Betak have been brought in to help with the logistics of staging a dinner for several times more covers than The Strathearn accommodates and vintage furniture that fits the Gleneagles aesthetic has been sourced from all over Scotland. There is a station devoted to Scottish salmon sashimi and even the little bowls of green salad have a luxurious truffled dressing. Picardie treats us to a private walk-through of the bijou exhibition of 1950s Dior dresses in the ballroom next door, which picks up the dropped thread of the story of Dior and Scotland, and then we loop back to dinner for a pudding of delicious berries and lashings of cream.
Such an exquisite dinner meant that everyone thought they were going to be much too full to manage any breakfast the next morning. But that was before we saw what was on offer – a buffet groaning with all kinds of deliciousness, with not only four different honeys but also four different kimchis – and decided that it would be rude not to. The radio announces the weather forecast: it is to be grey and rainy through much of the UK, but sunny in central and southern Scotland. What luck. It is a day made for outdoor pursuits. Hattie Brett from Grazia has shamed the rest of us by being in the swimming pool at 7am. Lisa Armstrong from the Telegraph and fashion writer Mahoro Seward, take up the offer of falconry and come back full of tales of their exploits – did you know that a golden eagle can crush the skull of a red deer in one claw? – while I join Dior’s very own PR goddess, Sydney Ingle-Finch, along with editor Felix Bischof and the Telegraph’s Sasha Slater on a spectacular countryside hike that takes in bucolic lanes, wide-open vistas and hillsides with clear, rushing streams glittering in the sun.
Scone Palace – it’s pronounced Scoon, fashion fact fans – holds an important place in the history books as the crowning place of Scottish kings (it gets a shout-out in Macbeth, even). It was also the venue, in 1960, for a show by Christian Dior London, the house’s English subsidiary, which staged a fundraising event there for The Queen’s Institute of District Nursing and The Perth and Kinross Union of Boys’ Clubs. Today, it’s our destination for a post-hike lunch. Inside there are two stuffed bears, a taxidermied peacock, an elephant’s skull and enough Sévres and Meissen 18th-century dinner services to feed an army. Lunch has been laid outside, a casual sharing-plates feast of Eyemouth crab and avocado salad with pickled heirloom tomatoes, grilled rump of beef with chimichurri and a white chocolate and raspberry roulade. Belle of the ball is aristocrat Lola Bute, with the cutest take on the kilt: a Clueless-sized mini in lipstick red with a matching jacket. I can’t resist taking on the unique ‘tartan’ maze of 2,000 beech trees, which are half green, half copper. Tougher than it sounds, actually. Thankfully, I made it out in time for the main event.
After such a build-up, the show itself has a lot to live up to. But not even the most jaded guest could be less than thunderstruck by Drummond Castle. A long, winding drive leads to austere cobbled ramparts, a series of diminutive archways and a small courtyard from which a vista suddenly appears of a jaw-dropping sweep of formal Renaissance-style gardens, added to the 15th-century castle in the 17th century, which have earned Drummond the nickname ‘the Versailles of Scotland’. Waiters in black kilts – such a good look, and I know that 10’s own Sophia agrees with me on this – offer trays of champagne and baskets of blankets to guard against evening chills. Backstage, Chiuri talks editors through a mood board which delves into Dior’s Scottish links and the history of the country itself (Mary, Queen of Scots is on the board).
It is just after 8pm when the show begins. The sun is still shining and the unmistakable haunting tone of bagpipes rings out across the valley. The first three looks are tartan, in a violet which Chiuri has told us she borrowed from the heathery palette of the local countryside. There are waders and chainmail bibs, courtly dresses of Jacobean lace and knitwear with punkish rips. It is fierce and feisty, glamorous and queenly, both steeped in history and utterly of its moment. In the natural splendour of Scotland, the grand house of Dior met its match, blessed by golden sunshine. And how lucky I was to be there to see it.
Taken from 10+ Issue 7 – DECADENCE, MORE, PLEASURE – out NOW. Order your copy here.
DIOR CRUISE 2025: SCOTLAND THE BRAVE
Photographer JOSHUA TARN
Text JESS CARTNER-MORLEY
Date JUNE 3, 2024
Location DRUMMOND CASTLE, PERTHSHIRE, SCOTLAND
Designer MARIA GRAZIA CHIURI
Hair GUIDO PALAU
Make-up PETER PHILIPS
Styling ELIN SVAHN
Casting directors EDWARD KIM and MICHELLE LEE
