Dior’s Spring 2025 couture show explored the foundations of fashion and beauty. Artistic director Maria Grazia Chiuri focussed her collection on the very essentials—or you could say the very bones of her craft and the archetypes of her maison.
The skeleton of a gown, an embroidery of dragonflies, butterflies and snails done in straw, raffia and lace—the absence of any substantial fabric making the intricate craftsmanship of the atelier all the more apparent—came layered over a bamboo crinoline framework.
The Cigale—a silhouette executed in in rigid moiré featuring exaggerated hips and cinched waist designed by Monsieur Dior for his autumn-winter 1952-1953 haute couture line—was reimagined as a fitted tailcoat in antique silver or ecru, worn open over bloomers in iridescent tulle.
Similarly the show’s installation conceived by Mumbai born artist Rithika Merchant and translated into large-scale textile panels by Karishma Swali and the artisans of Chanakya School of Craft, formed free-flowing visual interpretations of female narratives, passed down through generations of matriarchs.
As described in the show notes, the interplay of shifting shapes had an Alice in Wonderland quality to them—at once childlike and free from chronological constraints.
The demure Trapèze silhouette conceived for the house in 1958 by a young Yves Saint Laurent morphed into sawn off crinolines, bloomers and 80s inflected puffball skirts in twisted taffeta while Stephen Jones’ couture Mohican headpieces had a punk sensibility—albeit a very elevated one with their intricate ensemble of feathers, butterflies and flowers.
Just as the silhouettes of the clothing looked to the maison’s sartorial lexicon, the subtle “boyfriend blush” (Dior Rouge Blush Color & Glow) and the feathery brows of “elfin wood creatures” (Diorshow Brow Styler and Diorshow On Set Brow) were evolutions of previous makeup looks—respectively Spring 2025’s “workout blush” and Cruise 2025.
Backstage prior to the show, Dior Makeup Creative and Image Director Peter Philips described how his makeup—“fairy tale inspired, etherial, very elegant and delicate with a touch of edginess via a spiky eyebrow reflecting the spikiness of the mohawk” —was about enhancing the natural beauty of the skin via the new Dior Capture Totale Le Sérum and the Dior Forever Skin Perfect stick which made its runway debut last season for “a soft dewy finish.” The epitome of quiet luxury for the skin.
He explained how “a full makeup look would be more pret-a-porter.” Especially with the colorful nature of the show’s art installation, it’s important to “keep it calm so it doesn’t look like an episode of “Absolutely Fabulous,” he joked.
No tomato or strawberry girls here. When it comes to trends, Philips is more drawn to “caring ingredients” beyond those that have purely cosmetic value.
Likewise, couture isn’t about trends it’s about craftsmanship, legacy and universality.
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