Through The Looking Glass: Dior’s Haute Couture SS25 Collection Dances Between The Real And The Imaginary

For her latest outing at Dior, Maria Grazia Chiuri put a punk spin on Alice In Wonderland

For Spring/Summer 2025, Dior dances between the real and imaginary for its haute couture collection. See the full SS25 collection here. — PARIS, FRANCE – JANUARY 27: A model walks the runway during the Christian Dior Haute Couture Spring-Summer 2025 show as part of Paris Fashion Week on January 27, 2025 in Paris, France. (Photo by Peter White/Getty Images)

At first glance, Maria Grazia Chiuri’s haute couture Spring/Summer 2025 collection had all the markings of her SS23 outing—crinolines and yards of lace inspired by the the wardrobe of 16^th century Italian noblewoman-come-French Queen Catherine de Medici.

But this haute couture season, while she may have kept the Victorian collars, the creative director of Dior went beyond noble wares to reawaken essential themes in our collective sartorial memories—and then put a punk spin on it. We all know the works of English author and poet Lewis Carroll: Alice In Wonderland, The Hunting Of The Snark, the nonsense poetry which blurred the lines between perception and imagination. Using the mirrors in her couture studio, Ms. Chiuri—like Alice and her looking glass—mused the alternate reality that could exist beyond them. The fashion dream beyond the boundaries of reality.

And so, with the House’s famous Trapèze line, conceived in 1958 by the young Yves Saint Laurent, as her starting point, Chiuri sent a series of “Punk Alice’s” down her runway in Paris—a showcase of unpredictable encounters in Wonderland, if you will.

“The lace-trimmed tulle culottes are the buried memory of a child-woman capable of crossing as many boundaries as she wishes, adapting the world to her scale: immense or tiny,” the show notes read. “In this interplay of contrasts, she can be a flower-woman, in a cape of petals or in a short dress showing off the corolla of a curvy bust, or a bird-woman and accomplice to the headpiece that exposes a punk mohican reaching for the sky.

“The crinoline, in its modern, practical version, proves to be an extraordinary breeding ground for memories, yielding to the most excessive fantasies and motifs,” the show notes continue. “This shaken cage concealing its construction discloses threads that stretch and undulate with every movement, like embroidered branches.”

See the standout looks from Dior’s haute couture Spring/Summer 2025 show now.