Chiuri closed the door firmly on her Valentino era with a potent collection that showed Paris fashion week her range
With a catwalk show in the gardens of the Musée Rodin that brought Rihanna and Kate Moss to the front row and a square mile of central Paris to a standstill, Maria Grazia Chiuri became the first woman to head the house of Christian Dior. It’s a position that arguably makes her the most powerful woman in Parisian fashion since Coco Chanel. The moment is significant not only because Dior is a byword for style that has currency all over the world, but because it’s a house that symbolises womanhood itself. Since its very beginning, with the nipped-in silhouette of the postwar New Look, Dior has represented femininity as surely as Chanel has stood for chic.