Dior Spring-Summer 2025 Haute Couture by Maria Grazia Chiuri is an exploration of imaginative escapism, emanating a youthful energy influenced by Yves Saint Laurent’s debut ‘Trapèze’ collection for the House in 1958. The A-line silhouette liberates the body as sweeping and ruffled fabrics represent metamorphosis and, with plays on proportions, transparencies and cage-like crinolines erupting with flowers convey a playful surreality.
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.
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.
