Maria Grazia Chiuri’s Pre-Fall 2025 collection for Dior explores fashion not as ornament, but as architecture - a space to inhabit, a medium through which culture, identity and emotion are expressed.
Unveiled in the gardens of Kyoto's To-ji Temple, against the backdrop of ongoing global conversations around tradition and innovation, the collection draws on Japan’s sartorial heritage, most notably the kimono, and interprets it through Dior’s couture lens. It’s not the first time the House has looked East - Monsieur Dior himself designed coats to be worn over kimonos in the late 1950s, and Marc Bohan brought Dior’s vision to Tokyo in the early 1970s. But this collection feels more reflective than referential.
At the heart of it is a visit Chiuri made to the Love Fashion: In Search of Myself exhibition in Kyoto, which explores the emotional and cultural dimensions of dress. That influence is clear. These clothes are studies in how garments interact with the body and with memory. Chiuri asks: is the garment shaped by the body, or is the body shaped by the garment?
The silhouettes are generous and fluid: cocooning coats, wide-legged trousers, long skirts that ripple as they move. There’s an ease to it all, yet the craftsmanship is unmistakable. Rich silks, delicate embroidery, and floral prints reminiscent of traditional Japanese gardens elevate the collection beyond its minimal palette - dominated by deep black and punctuated with gold.
Kimono-inspired jackets are reworked with a contemporary structure. Belts cinch the waist but never constrain, and the tailoring, while precise, avoids rigidity. This is fashion designed to move, to breathe, to evolve with the wearer.
If Chiuri’s recent collections have explored feminism and craftsmanship through direct messaging and artisanship, this collection feels more introspective. The storytelling happens in the cut of a jacket, the line of a hem, the way fabric falls around the body. It’s a quiet collection, but a powerful one - asking the wearer to reflect on where they come from, and how they choose to show up in the world.
