Each Maria Grazia Chiuri collection is designed to open up room for the inventive imagination. For this Dior spring-summer 2023 ready-to-wear défilé, the Creative Director of Dior women’s lines notably uses the image of a map of Paris from the House’s archives, printed on a scarf and structured around the Avenue Montaigne (this Dior scarf created in the early 1950s). Thus she traces her own path, between autobiography and reflection. Then comes the Tuileries Garden, which was commissioned by Catherine de Medici. An Italian who arrived at the French court in 1533, this noblewoman remains a figure emblematic of the relationship between women and power, and fascinates Maria Grazia Chiuri because of her political intelligence, but also the innovations she launched, such as heels, the corset, and Burano lace, introduced to the royal manufactures.

Women know how to explore magical territories since they have a privileged connection with nature and its vital force. They listen to the turmoil that often traverses them. That most secret realm, at once in the shadows and marvelous, is like the baroque caves that inspired the artist Eva Jospin for the decor she dreamed up for this show in the heart of the Jardin des Tuileries.
Noncompliant with predetermined existences, women are capable of exercising power in many ways, including by escaping through the mind. The power of fashion becomes the power of women, a form of awareness that draws on this attraction to the outside world, to what lies beyond perception, knowledge and common experience. Fashion dialogues with reality through artifice; the garments of the Court are transformed. Maria Grazia Chiuri updates the corset by giving it a quasi-geometric shape that frames the bust. Thus, the guêpière, sometimes hidden, sometimes visible, outlines a silhouette reminiscent of the wide skirts worn at the court of Catherine de Medici. An ancestral tradition, raffia coats adorned with floral and bird motifs, that is also revisited with Dior’s creativity and contemporary expertise.
This collection pays homage to fashion as an art of invention, able to redefine the city of Paris over and over again, each and every time, allowing the multiple facets of its history to live on. Fashion as an urban concept, a showcase of clothes that color the spaces of our time; the city as a backdrop for the material and immaterial imagination of fashion and beyond. The map as a means of staging a city, of expressing the cultural complexity of our era, celebrating the power of the women who navigate it daily.

For Maria Grazia Chiuri, the Dior cruise 2023 collection is a journey of discovery and reflection. The locations chosen provide a spectacular backdrop for a procession of garments that come together to form a défilé, echoing the history of the House and its desire to seek out original collaborations inspired by their native territories.

The icon of this collection is La Capitana, the name given to Carmen Amaya. With her freedom to dance that did not submit to any rule, she represented the essence of Flamenco. An artist with singular, revolutionary movements, she was the first dancer in her field to dress in men’s clothing, combining power and fragility through her art. Expressing the soul of Spain, she continues to embody a conscious and plural femininity.
From the spring-summer 1956 haute couture Bal à Séville dress – designed by Christian Dior – to the Plaza de España – built for the 1929 Ibero-American Exposition to embrace the richness of the cultures that have shaped Spain and represent its multitudes – real and metaphorical places abolish borders by rethinking the dress codes that inspire fashion. In this intense atmosphere, depicted in the chiaroscuro of some of Goya’s paintings and through the words of Federico García Lorca, a creative process was born, melding fascination, homage, interpretation and restitution.
Among other references, the looks evoke the Duchess of Alba, a legendary character who rode horses with Jackie Kennedy in a short jacket, high-waisted pants and a wide-brimmed hat worn on an angle. But also, red, black, and mantillas. Elsewhere, the abundance of embroidery that adorns the venerated Madonna della Macarena’s gowns takes on the role of a sacred ritual in a choreography that suspends the body into an iconic image.
The emblematic Manila shawl retells the stories and journeys of the communities that created and wore it. The tale of these nomadic objects is narrated using multiple voices: note the men’s pinstripe suits, the pants worn with suspenders, the silk-lined waistcoats; the white shirts; the Andalusian horsemen’s pants; the short jackets adorned with brandebourg closures; the trimmed boleros that make the silhouette even more slender; the sleeves that can flare out like a cape. Shimmering taffeta – in red, yellow, ochre, black – is sculpted into exuberant skirts that symbolize both Dior and Spain. Carefully considered volumes elevate the contrasts; lace appears in manifold forms; the Bar jacket is reinvented in black velvet embroidered with various gold threads.
This Dior cruise event is thus transformed by Maria Grazia Chiuri into a meeting of emotions and intentions, conveying an idea of fashion that is both of the everyday and of the extraordinary, wherein the creations celebrate the multiplicity of the visions of femininity.

Heading to Monte-Carlo for the Chanel Cruise 2022/23 collection. “To me, Monaco is a matter of feelings above all. That’s Karl, Caroline, Charlotte, says Virginie Viard. From very early on, I knew we would hold a show there, and more precisely at the Beach Hotel. Besides, Karl was dreaming about it. From this magnificent venue, one can glimpse his villa, La Vigie. I will never forget the times I spent there: terraces and balconies, big umbrellas, baskets of flowers – so much beauty.”

The trailers of the collection, directed by Sofia and Roman Coppola, stage a group of girls enjoying boat trips, bathing in the sea or motor sports. “A sporty atmosphere, but not only. There are lots of tweed or silk jumpsuits lined with light terry cloth. Many sequins and flowers shape embroidered plastrons adorning thinly striped long shirt-dresses with white high collars – a nod to Karl –, a sequined midnight blue dress, or backless tops worn over wide-cut trousers.”
Inspired by the Monte-Carlo ballet and the dancers’ pointe shoes, black satin shoes are adorned by thin strass buckles. Bags are shaped like tennis racquets. The flowy and shiny swimming suits are twisted into asymmetrical black skirts or draped dresses. “The first time I saw Caroline was on the beach in Monaco. She was wearing a draped black dress, very thin tights and heels, recalls Virginie Viard. Monaco is inherent to the history of Chanel. We have lived so many happy moments there.”

Situated on the cusp of Dior’s history, on the continual pulse of fashion, Maria Grazia Chiuri’s collections are suspended between the present and the future, beating to the rhythm of simultaneity, synchronicity, in tune with the times. The Next Era* is the title of the work Mariella Bettineschi imagined for the Dior ready-to-wear fall-winter 2022-2023 show, wherein the Italian artist proposes a gallery of paintings composed of large-scale portraits of women from the history of painting from the 16th to the 19thcentury. Their cut up, stacked eyes question the judgment that has conditioned – and still conditions – women past and present. The gaze is reversed to suggest another reading of art history. This “framework” of the fashion show breathes life into Maria Grazia Chiuri’s concepts; notably (re)constructing a performative relationship between the body and the garment in a technical, aesthetic perspective, in a succession of operations associating forms, savoir-faire, materials and futuristic technologies.

The inside of Monsieur Dior’s garments reveals an extraordinary construction system. The Bar jacket, revisited by the Creative Director for this collection, transforms the structure of the original model into a system that regulates the body’s humidity and warms it up if necessary, thanks to innovative techniques developed in the D-Air lab** laboratories, while a bodysuit – crisscrossed by what appears to be an organic network of colored veins and arteries in luminescent colors – maintains a constant temperature.
The Next Era is also a temporal short-circuit where the iconic Roger Vivier for Dior pump is re-appropriated through the possibilities of embroidery, an example of exceptional craftsmanship enhanced by a technical fabric yoke around the ankle. Pieces that can be worn alone or in combination – such as belts with multiple pockets, or the adjustable laced corset – complete many outfits. Designed to be infinitely versatile, these pieces celebrate a new sartorial order where even the iconic Lady Dior sees itself transformed to accommodate everyday essentials.
The skirts are also reinvented, thanks to fabrics borrowed from the men’s wardrobe – such as grisaille – and are transformed according to the angle from which they are viewed to offer long, short, and pleated cuts. A hybrid collection that opens up unsuspected creativity through the use of embroidery, which adorns technical knitwear, waterproof materials, Nylon and cashmere. And, with a respect tinged with rebellion, the famous portrait of Christian Dior posing in front of the wall hanging that decorated his winter garden is appropriated so the latter is turned into a print that adorns a large coat while couture gloves – redolent of the biker world – climb the arm as a finishing touch to the silhouette. This collection seeks to express the complexity of fashion that revisits heritage in order to conceive the lines of tomorrow. A journey that shapes the artifacts of a new world, another world, to be made and invented.

* The Next Era, art installation by Mariella Bettineschi.
** D-Air lab is an Italian start-up founded in 2015 by Lino Dainese. Architect Silvia Dainese Gris is leading this special project for Dior.

“Devoting the entire collection to tweed is a tribute, says Virginie Viard. We followed the footsteps of Gabrielle Chanel along the River Tweed, to imagine tweeds in the colours of this landscape. Like that of a long pink coat mottled with blue and purple, or a burgundy suit with a delicate gold shimmer. This is what Gabrielle Chanel would do on her walks through the Scottish countryside: she would gather ferns and bouquets of flowers to inspire the local artisans for the tones she wanted.”

Then there is her story with the Duke of Westminster, his jackets that she made her own. “There’s nothing sexier than wearing the clothes of the person you love, continues Virginie Viard. Of course, I’m fascinated by this ever-contemporary gesture. And it’s Chanel that renders the tweed feminine.”
For the Chanel Fall-Winter 2022/23 ready-to-wear collection, presented in a space at the Grand Palais Ephémère swathed entirely in tweed, there are jackets in psychedelic colours, others that are subtly masculine or slightly oversize, trousers in black panne velvet, tight skirts worn with long socks and pointed pumps with a mini stiletto heel in patent leather, as well as boots and thigh-high boots in black or beige rubber. “I was also thinking about England in the 1960s, and very colourful record covers,” adds Virginie Viard.
Allowing for infinite combinations of colours and materials, tweed is an eternal code for the House: “I love working with it so much, I couldn’t live without it at Chanel.”

The atelier – where head and hands work in concert – is both an instrument and a place of experimentation; a living organ where savoir-faire and savoir-être meet and evolve, in the course of a collaboration that constantly reaffirms the magical and scientific language that is haute couture. This is the emblem of the Dior Spring-Summer 2022 Haute Couture Collection, designed by Maria Grazia Chiuri, through which the Creative Director of Dior’s women’s collections honors human relationships with handmade objects, expressing a desire to abolish the boundaries between art and craft once and for all. The body is thus a vector for breathing life into avant-garde projects.

Embroidery becomes a three-dimensional conceptual act that reinvents the atelier’s techniques and elemental excellence; it progresses through a choreography of movements and is not merely a decorative detail. It gives fabric its structure, its architecture. The embroidery, which stands out from – and interacts with – the material, rendering it evanescent and prompting an interplay with the surrounding air, as seen in the contrasting of a long, all-over embroidered ecru skirt with a sheer silk organza shirt.
The tights, a signature of the collection, also derive their spectacular dimension from embroidery to establish a lively dialogue with different pieces, from a grisaille-bedecked grey suit to evening dresses that marry the finesse of embroidery with the lightness of tulle, through a series of draped leotards. Here is Maria Grazia Chiuri reasserting the syntax and grammar of the atelier, the purity of lines fundamentally celebrating the very role, the essence of couture: to dress the body.
Elsewhere, cashmere coats embrace the silhouette and sleek capes in resplendent white conceal jacket-and-pant ensembles. Pleated skirts billow under structured coats, while the silver lamé jacquard fabrics of dresses highlight each movement of the body. These embroidered patterns, through which Dior’s heritage is reinterpreted, become the central element, and, following the rules of couture, are transformed by a vision that makes the atelier a collaborative mode of expression, where haute couture is a form of constant experimentation and questioning.

Elie Saab Haute Couture Spring-Summer 22 is an ode to the Mediterranean, a landscape that has produced an evolution of beauty, heritage, and charm; a landscape that has always provided simple solace and joy to Elie Saab, who continuously finds a trove of muse and vision in its unfailing abundance. With its wild bougainvillea that bloom vivacity wherever they climb and its deep blue sea that glistens as it flirts with luminous rays of golden sun, this idyllic picturesque is a taste of Eden on Earth.

Each gown is an intricate world of its own, an assemblage of different places, flavors and forms inspired by the many histories, cultures and terrains that live together in this wonderland of pulsating plenty.
A bright spectrum of colors splash across a panorama of silhouettes that take us on a marvelous journey. Gradients of capacious feathered ballgowns capture the magic of the in between moments of dusk and dawn, as the sun tints the skyline in celestial blues and sea green. Shimmery sequins and crystals embellish the tulle of night, guiding the exploration across a vast geography of plunging necklines and mermaid tails. Layers of fuchsia, blush and chartreuse taffeta explode into large off-the-shoulder rose petals and peony bouquets that exaggerate organic feminine curves.
Each passage of this escapade through geographies and time are made unique through generous textures and distinct organic forms. Strong structured shoulders like colonnades of ancient temples, plummet into billowing trains of ivory and greige. Sleeves continue into graceful gloves embroidered in a sun-kissed, sparkling sea of aquas and mints usher us forward, while tassels and fringe swish and sway to myths of the Greeks and Romans. Threads of silk are braided into intricate patterns that move across the body in geometrical arabesque-like curves. As the final destination draws near, the divine pearl white bride, enrapturing in feathers, floats in on a mist of organza and tulle billowing from below.
This collection is a voyage through an earthly garden of heavenly delight. The terrestrial paradise, Eden on Earth is a reminder that we are not only always surrounded by divinity, we are created of it.

For Maria Grazia Chiuri, each collection is an opportunity to write visual poetry, to establish a dialogue between the history of Dior and the contemporary world. She wanted to highlight the women who contributed to Monsieur Dior’s success, those true creative forces who were celebrated by Justine Picardie in her book Miss Dior*, which traces the life of Christian Dior’s sister Catherine.

Maria Grazia Chiuri has transformed the Dior family’s emblematic jute bags into a symbol of a new sisterhood: the House of Dior sorority, whose motto is L’union fait la force (“Strength through unity”). The maxim of this Dior Fall 2022 line pays homage to the Creative Director’s highly collaborative creative process, highlighting the show’s major inspiration – uniforms, which allow the wearer to assimilate into a group, erasing our differences, or to stand out from the crowd by appropriating or customizing them. The daring silhouettes that result allow for the expression of heady concepts such as communion and sharing.

*Published by Flammarion

“The idea for the show’s décor came from a longstanding desire to work with Xavier Veilhan. His references to constructivism remind me of those of Karl Lagerfeld”, says Virginie Viard. “I like this similarity of spirit between us, now and across time. In addition to creating the show décor with its references to the avant-gardes of the 1920s and 1930s, Xavier wanted to work with Charlotte Casiraghi. His artistic universe is full of horses and Charlotte is a skilled rider.”

Charlotte Casiraghi opens the show on horseback, wearing a Chanel jacket made of black tweed and sequins, while Sébastien Tellier plays oversized instruments imagined by the artist. “Xavier and Sébastien are friends. Along with Charlotte, they form the kind of Chanel family that I like to surround myself with.”
This décor, a nod to the aesthetics of Universal Exhibitions, acted as a framework “where I felt very free”, adds Virginie Viard. “These geometric shapes made me want contrasts, a great lightness and a lot of freshness: ethereal dresses that float as if suspended. Lots of flounces, fringes, macramé, bright lace, iridescent tweeds, colourful jewelled buttons.” Femininity too, with a pink tweed jacket with white stripes, straps composed of white braid embroidered with beads or silver chains, two-tone Mary-Janes with heels inspired by the 1920s revisited via the 1980s, and finely geometric embroidery, as if echoing the décor. All of the House of Chanel’s embroidery partners collaborated on this collection, “one of whose key pieces is a dress entirely embroidered by Lesage with constructivist camellias in black, white and coral beads, worn with a little black jacket”, Virginie Viard points out before concluding: “These references also belong to Gabrielle Chanel, of course. It’s like a conversation that crosses time.”