Maria Grazia Chiuri turned the Dior Cruise 2026 collection into a personal reflection stitched through with cinematic echoes and poetic references. Presented on May 27, 2025, in the gardens of Villa Albani Torlonia in Rome, the show drew on the spirit of disguise, play, and imagination. Chiuri built her narrative around the figure of Mimì Pecci-Blunt, a cosmopolitan icon of early 20th-century society known for her flamboyant Bal de l’Imagination events. This historical muse served as the entry point into a world where fashion, memory, and fantasy collided.
Rome played more than just host, it shaped the collection’s tone. Chiuri referenced the city as a continuous reel of theater, fashion, and cinematic invention. Her Rome breathed in sync with Fellini’s surrealism, referencing the filmmaker’s own embrace of bella confusione, the phrase Ennio Flaiano once proposed for the film 8½. Rather than a literal retelling, Chiuri channeled Rome’s shifting surfaces into silhouettes, motifs, and visual codes.
The collection moved through references like a costume ball itself. Vests borrowed from men’s tailoring, some edged with lapels, grounded the opening looks. Chiuri paired them with long skirts and tailored tailcoats, suggesting the formality of another era without falling into replication. Lace dresses, some sheer and delicate, others carrying bas-relief designs, offered a more romantic counterpoint. The tension between historical echoes and forward-looking structure carried throughout.
Military jackets appeared with sharp black edging, echoing ceremonial attire. Buttons stood out with quiet precision. A few dresses recalled ecclesiastical chasubles, pulling from the visual vocabulary of sacred garments without overt symbolism. Chiuri then broke the tonal flow with a jolt of red and black velvet, inserting short dresses that nodded to the Fontana sisters, famed Italian couturiers who once dressed Anita Ekberg in La Dolce Vita. The reference fit effortlessly, linking fashion’s past to its present. One golden velvet dress brought the mood to its most refined pitch.
Although each piece stood strong on its own, the collection functioned like a farandole, a traditional French dance where individual performers remain linked, circling together. White carried through as a thread, appearing across a wide range of materials. Some looks felt dense and sculptural, while others floated with near-transparency. Rather than define a single aesthetic, Chiuri allowed texture and structure to shift freely, connected more by mood than logic.
What emerged from this tableau wasn’t a straightforward story but a layered reflection. Chiuri didn’t seek to anchor her work to historical accuracy. Instead, she allowed poetic intuition and magical realism to guide her. By staging the show in the private gardens of a Roman villa, she turned the collection into a living memory, a space where characters drifted between centuries and styles, between the seen and the imagined.
Discover the full Dior Cruise 2026 collection, featuring both haute couture and ready-to-wear looks in our gallery:
This is stunning!!!