Dior bows in Rome with Maria Grazia Chiuri’s cinematic Cruise collection

In a moment layered with symbolism and theatrical intent, Maria Grazia Chiuri unveiled what is widely expected to be her final collection for Dior, choosing Rome — a city steeped in history, mythology, and personal resonance — to host the Maison’s Cruise 2025 presentation. The setting: Villa Albani Torlonia, a baroque sanctuary housing one of Europe’s most revered private collections of Greco-Roman antiquities. The message was clear — this was not merely a runway show, but an operatic farewell.

Chiuri, Dior’s first female artistic director and one of the most commercially successful in its modern history, exercised rare directive control over her audience: guests were asked to observe a formal dress code — white for women, black for men. A curatorial move in keeping with the collection’s muse: cinema, memory, and couture as a form of storytelling.

What followed was a procession of 80 looks that blurred the lines between ready-to-wear and haute couture. The first 24 exits — exclusively in shades of white, sheer, embroidered or sequined — evoked what WWD aptly termed the “Renaissance princess.” The purity of palette gave way to a succession of crimson and black velvet column dresses, interspersed with androgynous outerwear — a silhouette dialectic Chiuri has made her own.

Adding gravitas to the mise-en-scène was a collaboration with famed Roman costume atelier Tirelli, whose archive includes costuming for Luchino Visconti’s The Leopard and Martin Scorsese’s The Age of Innocence. “We wanted not only to experiment, but also with this lightness, to show that the construction behind a film costume is very close to haute couture,” Chiuri told WWD, underlining the collection’s technical rigour and narrative ambition.

Under her nine-year tenure, Chiuri not only repositioned Dior as a platform for feminist and artisanal dialogue, but also delivered some of the highest commercial returns in the brand’s modern history. As the first major acquisition by LVMH founder Bernard Arnault, Dior now occupies a central role in the group’s luxury portfolio — both symbolically and strategically.

Her presumed departure, though not officially confirmed, has been the subject of industry speculation for months. Sources close to LVMH suggest that Jonathan Anderson, currently at Loewe, will assume full creative control across both womenswear and haute couture — a consolidation that signals significant confidence but also immense responsibility.

On her own terms

With Anderson’s first Dior Homme collection expected to debut at Paris Men’s Fashion Week in June, analysts anticipate an imminent announcement from LVMH. The decision to allow Chiuri to close her chapter on her own terms — in Rome, among ruins and cinematic references — reflects the house’s reverence for her legacy, and an awareness of the delicate optics of succession.

The Cruise collection, masterful in execution and subtle in farewell, functioned not just as a collection, but as a thesis on what Chiuri brought to Dior: narrative couture grounded in history, articulated with intellect and emotional force. Whether Anderson will inherit that lens or reshape it entirely remains to be seen — but one thing is certain: a new era at Dior is already unfolding.