The Beauty
of Gestures

Celebrating the magic of savoir-faire, Maria Grazia Chiuri weaves dreamlike conversations with Karishma Swali, director of the Chanakya ateliers and founder of the Chanakya School of Craft, in Mumbai. Loyal friends for over 30 years, the two women share a taste for excellence and a desire to preserve a prodigious craft: embroidery. Together, they explore the many dimensions of an enchanting art, a blend of tradition and innovation, in the heart of Dior shows. With the Dior autumn-winter 2024-2025 ready-to-wear show, the Creative Director perpetuated their powerful exchange, showcasing the grace of the extremely precise, precious dance of the needle. 

Echoing the idea of mutation and the inventive effervescence that permeates the collection, embroideries – protagonists that open up every field of possibility – become tool(s), representing a terrain of freedom and creativity where surprise, poetry and sophistication emerge.

A profusion of dreamy details completes an ensemble consisting of a short jacket and a skirt cut above the knee. This multi-faceted work resembles a grandiose painting, from which emerges in relief – through the painstaking interlacing of gold-faceted cones and silvered-glass seed pearls – a multitude of flowers with harmonious petals. Evoking the founding couturier’s love of nature and botany, this fairy-tale composition is sprinkled with pearly beads, subtle punctuations like so many blossoming splendours flourishing in an allover embroidery. These scintillating trompe-l’œil are the fruit of absolute meticulousness: the fabric is stitched with infinite virtuosity, and each point is placed exactly in the right place to gradually create the motif. An abundance of vegetation, an inexhaustible source of inspiration, highlights the continually renewed heritage of the House.

A symbiosis of the essence of couture and the demands of ready-to-wear, this look also reveals unique finishes worked like jewels to elegantly underscore the garment’s cut. The contours of the neckline are progressively outlined: in a hypnotic ballet of rigorous movement, elements are arranged, one by one, in orderly, regular fashion. Odes to the finesse of passementerie, stitches follow one another on airy tulle, line after line, forming 11 rows of metallic gems with an iridescent sheen. As a last touch, baroque-style brooches embellished with long filaments of twisted cannetille purling transform these (sumptuous) ornaments into sparkling jewels. 

A fabulous collective score exalting the deep ties between Dior and India, two exceptional legacies that meet and mutually enrich one another. 

Virtuoso Metamorphosis

Throughout Dior’s collections, artisanal skills continue to transform each model into an object of art and desire. While techniques evolve and aesthetics modernize, nothing can replace the magic of the hand. In the words of Monsieur Dior, “the hand of man (...) is irreplaceable because it gives to everything it creates what no machine can: poetry and life.”^*  A time-honoured art, embroidery resists the passage of time. Now, more than ever, this ancestral craft is couture’s eternal partner: they are born of the same value, that of excellence.