For all its lacey loveliness and luxuriant layering, the Dior autumn/winter 2025 collection was inexplicably sorrowful

There was something morose at Dior. The joy was sucked out of the collection, as if to reflect an obviously depressing world. But what was Maria Grazia Chiuri despairing about? The still-pervasive rumour that JW Anderson might be replacing her? It is known that Ms Chiuri is big on very little colour. And this season, she continued with her streak of the usual black, white, and khaki (or beige), but now with one spot of maroon. Did someone at the Dior studio chuck out the colour swatch cards? Despite her usual use of lace, her beloved transparency, and her jaunty mix of tough and pretty, there was something so dreary about the colour palette that it was tempting to think she was putting together the costumes for a gothic horror, such as Nosferatu.

Rather, Ms Chiuri was inspired by Virginia Woolf’s 1928 fictional biography Orlando, whose central theme is the exploration of gender identity. Considered a “feminist novel” (which is, of course, up the designer’s alley—even without feminism spelled out in the collection, there was an undercurrent), the character Orlando, a man who morphs into a woman, is said to be based on the real-life lover of Ms Woolf, Vita Sackville-West, herself an accomplished writer of novels and plays. Although it is not clear if Ms Chiuri felt intellectual kinship with the English author, her choice of a member of the Bloomsbury Group was a tad belated. Was it because of the departure of Kim Jones, a self-confessed lover of all things Bloomsbury, to the extent that he put together, in spring 2021, a collection inspired by it (also for Fendi spring 2021). With a reportedly largest archive in the world of Virginia Woolf books and ephemera, he was even able to curate a Bloomsbury Group exhibition and sale for Sotheby’s. Why was Maria Grazia Chiuri claiming a piece of Virginia Woolf, now?

This was possibly Dior’s simplest and severest presentation, with scenography by the renown American theatre director Robert Wilson, featuring—instead of, typically, the works of female artists—a flying Pterodactyl (that could have been borrowed from a Jurassic Park ride), suspended menacing meteorites, and strangely small glowing icebergs, all the better to reflect the odyssey that suggested Orlando’s transition. Mr Wilson was likely the obvious choice as scenographer, having staged Orlando as a monologue several times before, in English with Miranda Richardson and in French with Isabelle Huppert, just to name two. The runway would not be unfamiliar to fans of Mr Wilson’s stage productions—minimalist, with clear spaces and precise lighting, and models walking slowly and deliberately. What Dior-ness they indicated was not immediately discerned. Perhaps, the chapalang (hotchpotch) soundtrack—from Ellen Reid and James McVinnie to Nora Varnrable to FKA Twigs to Anton Batagov to Pavel Milyakov and Yana Pavolva to Röyksopp and Fever Ray, seriously (!)—spoke more clearly.

It could, perhaps, be noticed that we have not really mentioned the clothes. Her source of inspiration was fascinating, even if already mined, but her execution had the depth of a pie dish. It was hard to really see extant newness in Ms Chiuri’s designs. We saw hints of the continuation of her couture collection presented in January, but composed in less formal forms. She is quite the conjurer, sending out the ghosts of the past that went even further back: Gian Franco Ferré’s white shirts (but none of his structural shapes) to romanticise things further and John Galliano’s ‘J’adore Dior’ T-shirts to add a punk counterpoint to the surfeit of cloyingly hip girlishness (with ermine caplet for a touch of royal whimsy?). Ms Chiuri has had a thing for outerwear that mimicked the Inverness coat, only shorter, and these she continued to churn out with remarkable gusto. There were also the usual lean duster-coats worn with shorts, sometimes lace panties. Maria Grazia Chiuri’s Dior never demanded our enthralment. It still did not, even in uncertain times, especially for her.

Screen shot (top): dior/YouTube. Photos: Dior