Dior Women’s RTW AW25: Virginia Woolf, Literary Metamorphosis

Chiuri's Woolf-Inspired Dior Women's RTW AW25 Collection

By Cynthia Gruver

Dior welcomed guests to a venue filled with dreams in Paris after the whirlwind of festivities of Milan Fashion Week. Dior RTW FW25 was an understated show, opening with an androgynously dressed model sitting still on a boundless swing, spotlit blue with an upturned look of optimistic wonder. The theatrical scene left much to be said about Maria Grazia Chiuri's shift from sports to storybooks. It was just last year that the creative director did an Ancient Greece-inspired couture collection after dressing Misaki Emura, Estelle Mossely, and Elaine Thompson-Herah for the 2024 Olympics, with an emphasis on athletic, streamlined monochromatics naturally carrying into the maison's ready-to-wear.

A new era for_Dior_comes hot on the heels of a successful spring 2025 haute couture show, which saw a pivot towards ruffles, crinolines, and trains of lace. It's a move that makes sense; Chiuri and Pierpaolo Piccioli headed the fairytale haute couture collections at Valentino before her move to Dior in 2016. Chiuri's show notes subtly refer to the change of tides as she describes her new collection as one of metamorphosis.

Turning the Pages: Dior Spring 2025 couture and Fall 2025 ready-to-wear

Inspiration for Chiuri's Dior connects her design history to what she finds inspiring in Virginia Woolf's "Orlando," the feminist, forward-thinking novel that depicts life before and after the main character's sex change. It's a tribute to Woolf's gay lover, Vita Sackville-West, which West's own son dubs as one of the longest, most charming love letters in literature.

Dior Women's Ready-to-Wear FW25: Looks 3, 5, 74 (Photos courtesy of Christian Dior)

Among the frills to be found in Chiuri's collection is a removable ruff collar of the Elizabethan era, which Orlando wears not only on the book's cover, but also as the lover of the queen. Chiuri's sway between masculine and feminine silhouettes echoes Orlando's gender non-conforming dress, as well as the changing landscape of womenswear in the 1920s, when Woolf published the novel. Lines blur as frock coats and lace cloaks meet floral appliqué bloomers with tentacles of trailing tulle.

Dior Women's Ready-to-Wear FW25: Looks 14, 70, 46 (Photos courtesy of Christian Dior)

"The flower bloomed and faded. The sun rose and sank. The lover loved and went," and yet the sun continues to shine on Chiuri. Her new collection balances timelessness with a lean into antiquity–as fashion shifts from purposeful utility to a form of playful escape–perhaps what Virginia found as she penned "Orlando" in her love for Vita.

Guests at Dior RTW AW25 included artists Xin Liu, Ling Ling Kwong, Kornnaphat Sethratanapong, JISOO, Olivia Palermo, and Natalie Portman**.**

JISOO, Kornnaphat Sethratanapong and Sirilak Kwong, Xin Liu, Natalie Portman, Olivia Palermo (Photos courtesy of Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images for Christian Dior)