May 28, 2025 |
Maria Grazia Chiuri brought the international fashion circus to her home town, Rome, where she spent most of her professional life – at Fendi and Valentino – before joining Dior in 2016. Rome has a special point of view, which comes from, “cinema, theatre and art. It’s about dreams,” she said, explaining, that in fashion you need to dream in order to create.
She let her vision roam far and wide for this show, bringing elements of film, theatre and costume together with her refined and distinctive Dior aesthetic. Chiuri had looked at historic theatre and film costumes and took guests on a tour of the Tirelli costume house as part of a programme of cultural activations around her cruise show. Noting the similarities between hand-made film costumes and haute couture, she commissioned Tirelli to reproduce some of its most famous creations, seen in films ranging from Luchino Visconti’s The Leopard to Martin Scorsese’s The Age of Innocence. As guests filtered into the gardens of the neoclassical Villa Albani Torlonia, which houses a ravishing, private art collection full of ancient statues and antiquities, they encountered extras, wearing these exquisite costume recreations.
As the sun set, a mist rolled over the Villa’s famous gardens, offering a suitably cinematic backdrop for the models, who crunched along its gravel pathways. Chiuri mixed haute couture pieces in with her cruise collection, which married ethereal delicacy with androgynous tailoring. “You see the craft,” said Chiuri of her black and white colour palette (which also extended to the guests). It was inspired by a Man Ray photograph of a Bal Blanc, thrown in 1930 by art patron Mimì Pecci Blunt, who also founded the Rome’s Teatro Della Cometa, the 1950’s theatre that Chiuri and her daughter, Rachele Regini, have painstakingly restored over the past four years.
Craft came to the fore in this collection. Exquisite lace and hand-embroidery was lavished on gowns that were as light and delicate as fairy wings. It wasn’t the only plot line. Masculine and feminine mixed in a way that would have delighted Marlene Dietrich (an original Dior client). Her androgynous, movie star glamour was projected through the collection with Mannish outerwear and dapper tail coats. Some of the looks appeared to be inspired by the classical statues in the villa grounds, with one striking beaded gown featuring a trompe-l’oeil of a bare-chested Roman gladiator. A comment on how gender can be put on and taken off? It was a bold and intriguing sign-off from the designer whose first big statement at the house was a T-shirt declaring “We Should All Be Feminists”. Was this Chiuri’s last collection for Dior, as the fashion rumour mill suggests? If so she leaves a powerful imprint on the brand of art, craft, femininity, feminism. Bravo.
Photography courtesy of Dior.
