Maria Grazia Chiuri presented Dior Cruise 2022 collection in Athens, the cradle of Western civilization and of European arts. The inspiration for the collection were a series of photographs of one of Monsieur Dior’s haute couture lines, taken near the iconic Parthenon in 1951.
In the heart of the city dedicated to Athena, Maria Grazia Chiuri reinvents her genealogy and tweaks House codes like the peplum. In that spirit, she created her own map of Greece, informed by the personalities and images that nourished her references and poetry, from the works of Giorgio De Chirico to vases decorated with wrestling matches by Alexandre Iolas. Giant silhouettes stand out in close-up on sketches by the artist Pietro Ruffo, or are camouflaged on a selection of sportswear pieces. A series of white trouser suits evoking those worn by Marlene Dietrich structure a lexicon balanced between classicism and freedom: oversized houndstooth becomes Hellenized, the cannage motif takes on new abstractions, a star appears. An alliance of heritage and modernity that – within the iconic Panathenaic Stadium, the setting for the show – reveals a manifesto for a body that more than ever enjoys liberty of movement, performing without constraint.
