The Dior spring-summer 2025 haute couture collection thought up by Maria Grazia Chiuri is an opportunity to reawaken essential themes pertaining to sartorial memory – in particular the creativity of previous centuries – and to disrupt the order of time, taking us back to a dimension that belongs neither to past nor future, but to fashion itself and the idea of transformation associated with it.
In this temporal paradox, Maria Grazia Chiuri moves in total freedom, as if the mirrors that fill the couture studio could, similar to Alice’s looking glass, allow access to another reality, dominated by constant mutations of meaning. A reality that would grant this fashion dream, without ever having to relinquish astonishment or irreverence, and which would have the power to metamorphose shapes and emotions.
The Creative Director draws her inspiration notably from the Trapèze line conceived for Dior in 1958 by the young Yves Saint Laurent. The collection thereafter becomes a series of unpredictable encounters in wonderland, where the here and now continually play hide-and-seek, as if an ever-evolving being were discovering through each movement – during this constantly-changing time of fashion – recompositions as fleeting as they are fantastic.
The lace-trimmed tulle culottes, for instance, are the buried memory of a child-woman capable of crossing as many boundaries as she wishes, adapting the world to her scale: immense or tiny.In this interplay of contrasts, she can be a flower-woman, in a cape of petals or in a short dress showing off the corolla of a curvy bust, or a bird-woman and accomplice to the headpiece that exposes a punk mohican reaching for the sky.
The crinoline, in its modern, practical version, proves to be an extraordinary breeding ground for memories, yielding to the most excessive fantasies and motifs. This shaken cage concealing its construction discloses threads that stretch and undulate with every movement, like embroidered branches.
Simply hiding its structure, the underwiring enhances light blouses sublimated by floral embroidery. The visible bustiers and draped skirts are unforgettable. The Cigale silhouette – designed by Monsieur Dior for the autumn-winter 1952-1953 haute couture line – is reproposed here in the original moiré fabrics, adopted for a little skirt paired with a fitted tailcoat, accentuating the contrasting proportions. The cape is embellished with feathers delicately crafted in organza.
Black, both sober and superb, magnifies the coats, which orchestrate and underline the choreography of minute motions. The long dress shines supremely with its three-dimensional burnished silver embroidery, at the heart of a poetics of the absurd. It seems suspended in the perpetual temporality of fashion, the essence of which is to fulfil desires of all kinds.
