When Maria Grazia Chiuri presented her fall/winter 2025 collection for Dior earlier this year, there were already rumours swirling around her departure. Perhaps that was what gave the show its poignant, haunting feeling. Throughout her tenure, Chiuri has made it her signature to collaborate with female artists and craftspeople on installations and works that serve as both backdrop and context for her collections. This time, she bucked her own tradition and instead enlisted the director Robert Wilson to create an epic set with strobing lights, fog machines, floating boulders, and even a winged dinosaur soaring overhead at one point. 

The clothes that came down the runway were richer, moodier and more decorative than anything Chiuri has ever done at Dior. In almost a decade at the brand, the designer has championed a polished, unfussy, classically feminine look. Here, she finally let things get a little wilder and looser, and the results were the better for it. Chiuri’s starting point was Virginia Woolf’s gender-bending, time-travelling novel Orlando. This translated into a confident mash-up of eras, masculine and feminine dress, and struck the right balance between pretty and punkish. 

There were Edwardian frock jackets, long riding coats, embroidered capes and velvet cloaks, made entirely modern and cool when worn with Bermuda shorts and boots, or a frilly white shirt that managed to look both starchy and blousy at the same time. Some of the looks featured corset stomachers as a vest-like extra layer, only instead of lacing, they came with zippers. They worked as base layers too, as when worn like an athletic bra top under an oversized white shirt. Borrowing from the language of sportswear was a good move in making things feel more youthful and wearable, such as when Chiuri turned a regal puffed-sleeved doublet into a bomber jacket. She balanced things out with witchy lace dresses that added a whiff of sexiness, and a revival of John Galliano’s J’Adore Dior t-shirt—now distressed and edged with a lace–for a touch of grunge. 

Model ANN KRETZ/Mannequin
Make-up Artist & Hairstylist RICK YANG