Dior Was Full of Fashion History Throwbacks
In the glittering world of Dior, the neck ruff is alive and well. The Elizabethan staple was a nod to Virginia Woolf’s transformative novel Orlando, courtesy of Dior creative director Maria Grazia Chiuri. But that wasn’t the only throwback at Dior’s fall/winter 2025 show today in Paris.
Dior also brought back a piece of pop-culture fashion history today. Enter: the celebrity-ified J’adore Dior T-shirt with the MGC treatment—elongated and covered in patches of feminine lace. There were also statement ruffles, Dalmatian-print furry capes, jacquard jackets that came long and short, and serious nods to the Victorian era, plus a heavy dose of medieval revival dressing. Think: sweeping black lace dresses, transparent button-down gowns covered in floral embroidery, and the editorially dramatic star of the show, structured bell-shaped mini dresses dripping with lace panels that would have been perfectly at home at The Met Cloisters. From afar, they looked like whimsical wonders or pieces of modern-day armor, a veiled statement in itself from one of the very few women creative directors of a major house to show in Paris this week.
The collection opened up with a model sitting on a swing—an ethereal vision that set the stage for an installation that felt viscerally more dramatic than Dior shows in recent seasons past. Trading up from the usual walls covered in collaborative artwork, the venue was transportive in that it felt like a different world or new universe. Large prehistoric white birds flew across the ceiling of the venue; there were asteroids, light-up icebergs, and space-like projections while FKA twigs’s “Room of Fools” played as the soundtrack.
Chiuri was working with the theme of transformation this season, pulling from the Dior archives and the history of fashion in a more general sense. “The purpose of this proposition is to demonstrate how clothing is a receptacle that affirms cultural, aesthetic, and social codes,” she stated in the show notes. “Each collection is a construction, a project steeped in fantasy. An awareness. An invitation to use fashion to be yourself.”
The nod to former Dior creative director John Galliano was clear with the aforementioned J’Adore Dior tee that he popularized in the early 2000s. But Chiuri was also inspired by the former Dior artistic director Gianfranco Ferré, who worked at Dior from 1989 to 1996. “The exploration of the stories traversing fashion and its digressions allows the celebration of a femininity that imagines possible futures by mixing evocations of a past that is ever closer to the contemporary wardrobe,” read the show notes.
All those ruffs and rounded collars were grounded with the kind of typical fare we know Chiuri for best. Delicate gauzy sheers, olive trench coats, and sturdy black leather riding boots popped against other accessories, such as berets with veils.
To close the show, models stormed the runway all at once, forming pairs and posing before taking off. With 79 looks in total, the collection may have felt slightly overwhelming in terms of volume. However, it also showcased the classic Maria Grazia Chiuri aesthetic with a bit of that newness the industry has collectively been craving from Dior. Nostalgia and history continue to dominate the shows this season.
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