Maria Grazia Chiuri’s Cruise 2026 show—her last as Dior Women’s creative director—at the gardens of Villa Albani on May 27 2025 blends haute couture, prêt-à-porter and cinematic reverie, summoning the ghosts of Rome’s filmic past and the liberating spirit of imagination.
Dior’s Cruise 2026 showcase reveals an autobiographical synthesis of a moment in time—a ‘bella confusión’ inspired by the phrase that Ennio Flaiano coined for Federico Fellini when envisioning ‘8 ½’. Set against the storied backdrop of Rome, a city forever entwined with cinema, theatre, fashion and art, the show blurs reality and fantasy to ignite the act of imagination.
At the heart of this visual fable is Chiuri’s encounter with Mimì Pecci Blunt—the charismatic doyenne of Rome, Paris and New York—which sparked the idea of reviving one of Blunt’s famed bal de l’imagination soirées. In this suspended world of masked revels, costumes become a living collage of all the arts, encouraging us to disguise, defy rules and cross that misty line between the living and their spectral counterparts.
Chiuri’s designs fuse metaphorical pieces and archival vestiges with a contemporary syntax. Borrowing masculine vests—some with lapels—and layering them over long, flowing skirts and levitas, she crafts silhouettes that oscillate between rigid structure and ethereal movement. Gowns in ultra-fine lace and those embossed in low relief share the stage with military jackets trimmed in black, evoking both ecclesiastical vestments and sartorial militancy.
Punctuating the white canvas of the collection are short dresses in black and red velvet, a nod to the Fontana sisters who styled Anita Ekberg for ‘La dolce vita’. A single golden-velvet piece shimmers as the epitome of refinement. Like dancers in a farandole, each element exists as part of the whole yet resonates on its own, echoing the dialogue between couture and wearability that unfolds throughout the show.
This creative odyssey culminates in a cinematic collaboration with Matteo Garrone, whose 2020 film ‘The Tarot Garden’ first married Chiuri’s couture to his dream-like Italian landscapes. Their new short film, ‘Les Fantômes du Cinéma’, draws on temporal collisions reminiscent of ‘Fantasmi a Roma’ by Antonio Pietrangeli, and delves deeper into how clothing can juxtapose eras. With the help of Umberto Tirelli’s historic costume house, Chiuri selected iconic ensembles from cinema’s golden age—rendered in ghostly broken-white tarlatan—to summon visions dreamed up by Fellini and Pasolini, celebrating the liminal space between fiction and everyday life.
In reinterpreting the characters, landscapes, narratives and mythology of her native Rome, Chiuri and Dior invite us to question, to dream and to explore a new network of stellar affinities through the magic of fashion and cinema.
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