SINCE TAKING OVER AS CREATIVE DIRECTOR IN 2016, MARIA GRAZIA CHIURI HAS TRANSFORMED DIOR WITH HER RADICALLY ZEITGEISTY, VALUES-DRIVEN AND WEARABLE VISION. KENYA HUNT MEETS THE WOMAN REMAKING HIGH FASHION
‘WHOO! WHOO! WHOO! WHOO!’ SOME 21 models chant backstage, the napes of their necks framed by U-shaped, Frida Kahlo-esque braids, each decorated with a single gold butterfly clip suspended in the centre. As the women dance and jump around Maria Grazia Chiuri, it looks like the designer is surrounded by a flight of monarchs breaking free of their cocoons.
Watching Chiuri with the cast of her cruise 2024 show in Mexico, I get the sense that this is a woman having the last laugh. Between ambitious, critically acclaimed destination shows spanning Mumbai and Mexico City, the year has felt like an ultimate triumph, a masterful flex for the creative director whose time at Dior has been a standout success story. She’s that rare designer whose clothes can strike the balance between wearability – an easy prairie skirt, say, or crisp shirt with just the right amount of slouch – and intellectualism (Chiuri is a voracious reader who imbues her work with wide-ranging cultural references from Judy Chicago to Simone de Beauvoir). She’s reached that Holy Grail position between (wildly successful) profitability and critical acclaim. The New York Times critic Vanessa Friedman recently described Chiuri as, ‘the most subversively political, even radical, designer in charge of a big French fashion brand’.
But positive press wasn’t always a given. Like most women in highly visible boss roles, Chiuri has had to deal with detractors and dismissive labels. Sitting at the helm of a luxury behemoth such as Dior, in an industry built on the idea of hierarchy – and whose creative stars have historically been men – added a layer of complication.
When she took the job in 2016, to no small amount of media noise about her being the first woman creative director in the 75-year history of the house, she had mixed feelings about the fanfare.
‘Everybody started to say I was the first woman [to be creative director]. But I never thought about my being a woman in this way. Why were they only speaking about that?’ Chiuri says, in a Zoom chat from her office in Paris several weeks after the show in Mexico. She looks relaxed, her trademark blonde hair now dark brown, as she sits at a large table next to a vase of hydrangeas and a jug of water, in front of a sprawling wall of books. She describes how the phrase ‘the first’ became loaded with subtext over time. As someone who is ‘a first’ myself (in my case, the first Black woman to edit ELLE), I can relate.
‘I immediately began to understand that underneath this sentence there were some doubts about my capacity. Like, the idea of being “the first” as being unusual,’ she say
