- 1964 (MCMLXIV)
- Living
- Italian
- Fendi, Valentino (co-director, 2008–2016), Dior (2016–2024)
- •First woman to lead Dior
- •Feminist-slogan T-shirts (2017)
- •Dior Cruise in Mumbai, Marrakech, Chantilly
- •Saddle bag revival
Maria Grazia Chiuri
The Roman designer who, in July 2016, became the first woman to lead Dior — and spent eight years using the house’s platform for overtly feminist couture.
Maria Grazia Chiuri was born in 1964 in Rome. She studied at IED Rome, joined Fendi after graduation, and in 1999 joined Valentino as accessories director. Promoted to joint creative director with Pierpaolo Piccioli in 2008, she departed for Dior in July 2016 as the house’s first female creative director.
The Feminism
Her first Dior collection, in September 2016, featured white T-shirts reading We Should All Be Feminists — a reference to the Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie essay. Proceeds were donated to the Clara Lionel Foundation. The declarative gesture set the tone for eight years of collections that used the Dior platform more explicitly, politically, than any female designer had been offered since.
I have to be clear. I am a woman designing for women. I have to say it. — Maria Grazia Chiuri
The Travelling Cruise
Her Cruise shows — staged in Mumbai (2023), Marrakech (2019), Lecce, Chantilly, Pueblo Olmeca — positioned Dior within individual craft traditions. The Mumbai Cruise, held at the Gateway of India, drew two million livestream viewers and generated several hundred million euros of advertising-equivalent media coverage.
In September 2024 LVMH announced Jonathan Anderson would succeed her at Dior. She has not, as of writing, confirmed her next appointment.
