Dior’s Amazons
Paris Fashion Week has come and gone, but the impressions it left on the fashion world are, as always, long-lasting and memorable. This time, Dior brought to the runway a collection by Maria Grazia Chiuri, incorporating installations and performance art centered around archery, with the overall concept speaking of female unity and empowerment.
No. 59 Dior Spring/Summer 2025 Ready-To-Wear, courtesy of Dior.
As the first female creative director for Dior, designer Maria Grazia Chiuri has been making history since the moment she took up her current position. From creating looks with a rebellious theme that are still inarguably feminine, timeless, and representative of the iconic fashion house, to designing performers’ outfits for the opening ceremony at the Paris Olympics, the Italian designer has been doing her absolute best to use her platform to fight for gender equality. Her signature style is all about female strength and empowerment, and she likes centering her looks around the freedom of movement, making revealing clothes that have nothing to do with provocativeness, and everything to do with allowing the body to move freely and naturally. As she stated for W Magazine, she “aims to bring fashion back to its origins and emphasize the relationship connecting the body and what dresses it.”
The first spark of inspiration for the collection happened when Chiuri was looking at the ancient Roman statue Diana of Versailles, depicting an Amazonian warrior in the Louvre, which made the Amazonian aesthetic the center of her ready-to-wear collection. These female warriors that originated in ancient Greek mythology represented the epitome of female strength and independence, especially since they lived in a matriarchal society. Partly also a homage to Christian Dior’s iconic Fall 1951 Amazone dress, this collection combined many different feminist elements and ideas and was even purposefully reminiscent of the recently concluded Paris Olympics. Ever since the start of her career, Chiuri has been fascinated by the idea that fashion can be used as a means to free women from constraints, both of their own bodies and the outside world, which translated to this collection as well. Additionally, she has been incorporating athletic elements into her collections ever since her fencing-inspired debut for Dior in 2016. To make the looks drive the message home even harder, she incorporated a combination of installation and performance art created by Italian artist SAGG Napoli.
Artist SAGG Napoli at the DIOR Spring/Summer 2025 Ready-To-Wear show during Paris Fashion Week, via IG @sagg_napoli.
The artist started off the show with a look inspired by the ancient Greek goddess Artemis, carrying a bow and arrow to the impressive 70-meter construction made from glass and metal, in which the artist performed an archery session over the course of the show. Feminist manifesto texts and quotations were incorporated all over the construction. Calling herself a modern-day Amazon, SAGG Napoli is as passionate about this theme as Chiuri herself, and she picked up archery in 2020, which she now practices at a high level but also incorporates into her art. She’s passionate about archery because it’s an elegant sport that requires patience, precision, and total focus, which aligns incredibly well with her art. As she stated for Dior, “Having patience means trusting a process and setting intentions and goals, working towards each one, and slowly allowing the technical movements to synchronize with your muscles and your mind.”
When it comes to the collection itself, a palette of black, white, silver, and beige dominated the looks, with a few red accents serving as a counterpart to the dominant neutral colors. The black-and-white combinations spoke of contrast, balance, and equilibrium, pairing unexpected pieces together in a yin-yang way that worked beautifully. There were a lot of diagonal lines and cuts that represented flexibility and freedom of movement, which are qualities that have historically not been connected to femininity but shined in elegance through Chiuri’s collection. Combined with numerous off-the-shoulder numbers, the diagonal cuts produced a unique and alluring feminine silhouette. Another element of classical femininity were the occasional numbers incorporating glitter and fringe.
Reimagined knee-high gladiator boots dominated the models’ footwear, and the accessories included cross-body bags, gloves, and subtle arrow shapes. Some of the off-the-shoulder shirts and jackets were paired with gauntlet gloves, a look that was inspired by none other than a 1949 Dior show. An additional element that represented female unity and camaraderie while still celebrating each look’s individuality was the silver headbands that almost every model was wearing.
The whole collection represented a big tribute to both the Amazons and the recently finished Paris Olympics, painting a bigger picture that spoke of female empowerment and the pride in women’s bodies' agility and strength, reminiscent of the mentioned female warriors. Chiuri created a union of fashion, body, and sport, perfectly balancing out the allure of SAGG Napoli’s performance art with her spectacular designs.
