Tweed, corsets and punk: Scotland through the eyes of Dior

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In the current fashion narrative, context is crucial. It is the place and the situation, the backdrop of a fashion show, that often, if not almost always, gives value and depth to creations that might initially appear bland, pale, even forgettable.

As for the background provided, the brand DiorAs Art Director Maria Grazia Chiuriis incomparable, the cruise fashion show represents the culmination of a journey, extremely rich in references, passionate and layered. However, there is an essential difference between Chiuri’s work and that of many of her colleagues: for her, context and collection are closely linked, one can say influencing each other, rather than simply juxtaposed and superimposed as elsewhere; at Dior, everything is reserved without fear of being didactic or literal. What remains, then, is an interest in the materiality of local customs and textile uses: for Chiuri, a woman who makes, everything starts with the material, with something tangible, something that is written on the skin of the clothes and that starts with the material. In just a moment, it becomes a story and a communication.

The Dior Cruise 2025 show took place last night in the splendour of the Italian gardens at Drummond Castle in Scotland, enveloped in the crystalline light of a boundless yet cold sunset, accompanied by the piercing, mournful sound of bagpipes – Scotland is a country full of melancholy. Intriguing and violent stories. As expected, the collection incorporated distinctly Scottish themes, from the monkish portraits of Mary Stuart to tartans and kilts in all their forms, to Harris Tweed, the finest fabric of these lands, so rough to the touch, yet so soft in its colours that echoed the misty, damp landscape.

Chiuri added something else to the mix, however. Aware of how much of an influence Scotland has had on the world of fashion, and especially on Monsieur Dior, who held a charity exhibition here in 1955—the black-and-white photographic prints that alternated with tartan were derived from backstage documentation of this momentous occasion—he brought in Scottish paintings in a kilt-like direction that was also predictable, but still always had a strong punk punch, depicting a somber and warrior figure of a woman walking on the catwalk lawn in giant boots, adorning herself with an almost tribal decoration and veil, her corset-tightened body, not unlike the male idealization of dominance over the female body promoted by Christian Dior, but rather exuding a militant and energetic pride.

Chiuri was at her best when draping tartan fabrics and liquefying structures, noting that the kilt, like the sari and the skirt, stems from the primary impulse to cover the body with fabric as it emerges from the loom: a universal way of connecting distant cultures. It is in this robust fluidity that the piece expresses a truly personal style, while the rest is a diaristic interpretation of constellations of forms and images that have been widely and certainly more accurately expressed in Sarah Burton’s work for Alexander McQueen.