Leave it to Maria Grazia Chiuri, Dior, Virginia Woolf, and Robert Wilson to create the most mesmerizing show—or rather, performance—of the international runway season so far.

For the Fall/Winter 2025 collection, Chiuri transformed a custom-built modernist theatre in the Tuileries into a stage where fashion met literature. She seamlessly blended the historical flourishes of Virginia Woolf’s tumultuous novel “Orlando” with elements of Dior’s DNA, drawing inspiration from Gianfranco Ferré and John Galliano. The result was a bold and beautiful collection—one of her best for Dior.

Chiuri structured the show like a five-act play, opening with a sombre tone as the cast walked at an almost funereal pace, dressed in short courtier’s jackets, britches, elongated redingotes, and curvy sheaths. Every look featured lace detailing—from the tailoring to the knee socks and shoes.

 
In a pre-show briefing, Maria Grazia Chiuri explained that her point of reference was Gianfranco Ferré precisely because he was the first Dior designer who had not worked with Monsieur Dior.

“Ferré is very likely less celebrated because he worked at a time when fashion communication was very different.  Galliano arrived at an explosion of interest in fashion, so maybe Ferré’s time was less appreciated,” opined Chiuri.

Hence, she riffed on Ferré’s famous white shirt, using mannish versions in a gender-free expression, in sync with “Orlando,” where the protagonist poet changes sex from man to woman, living through several centuries of English literary history.

She then reinterpreted Ferré’s famed corsets into a striking new hybrid jacket that will be admired by many and copied by lesser talents. Whatever else can be said about Chiuri’s seven-year tenure at Dior, she has undeniably made the brand one of the most replicated in fashion. And, as in life, imitation remains the highest form of flattery.
 
As the show unfolded, the clothes began with a distinctly masculine edge, like a perfectly cut Grenadier Guards red jacket, designed to be worn with the collar up and paired with a “Gianfranco Chiuri” white ruffled shirt. Or a superb officer’s black jacket, completed with frogging and worn with one of a score of mini gilet corsets.

Then came frilly, ruffled bloomers, capes, frocks, and trains. There were also some striking new hipster-historical versions of the trench coat or parka that somehow managed to combine hints of John Galliano’s love of the Renaissance and Baroque—other signifiers in the house of Dior, which holds the biggest concentration of DNA in fashion.

The show rose to a crescendo when the entire cast stood inside Robert Wilson’s theatre. Maria Grazia Chiuri took her bow, waving toward the section where CEO Delphine Arnault sat smiling.

“I have to say, I am very honoured to work with Bob Wilson. In my view, it is easier for a designer to create clothes for cinema or theatre than for a great director to work on a catwalk show. Another reason I was so impressed by Bob’s ideas,” she said.
 
Back in 1996, Robert Wilson created a single-act theatrical production of “Orlando,” which premiered at the Edinburgh Festival with Miranda Richardson in the title role. Although the novel “Orlando” has six sections, it ends with Orlando’s sea captain husband zooming over her head in an airplane. A stray bird then appears as Orlando cries out, “It’s a goose! The wild goose!”

An image Wilson evokes with a flapping bird rolling above the coiffed audience in the Tuileries, gliding over the steeply stacked stalls designed like a university auditorium—as if the fashionistas were medical students gathered to study the dissection of a cadaver, Chiuri explained, adding, “Fashion is, at its base, a performance. And it makes everything more stimulating to present a diva in a new light. The key idea about fashion is that it gives you the chance to work with other creative disciplines. It’s stimulating for both sides.”
 
With speculation growing that this may be Maria Grazia Chiuri’s final Dior collection to be staged in Paris, some see “Orlando” as a fitting metaphor for her time at the house. She has brilliantly mined the brand’s archives, DNA, and multiple designers, even as she reinvented them all with a feminist slant.

When asked about the comparison, Chiuri’s coal-rimmed eyes twinkled. “Oh, I don’t think designers make great critics. Each one focuses on their own work—designers, photographers, writers, or artists. But if that is your opinion… I prefer to see fashion as an expression of our time, where the changes in fashion also express the passage of time.”