Last night in Perthshire, Dior once again showed its might as a luxury superpower as it unveiled its Cruise 2025 show in the luxuriant Italianate gardens of the 15th Century Drummond Castle in front of 550 guests, including Jennifer Lawrence, Lily Collins, Anya Taylor-Joy, Emma Raducanu, Rosamund Pike, Maisie Williams, Alexa Chung and somewhat rivetingly, Geri Halliwell.
The Parisian house has a perhaps surprisingly close connection with Scotland, its founder Christian Dior was a committed Anglophile, including a dress entitled “Écosse” in his 1947 collection, as well as hosting shows at Blenheim Palace (which the brand revisited its Cruise-show outing in 2016) and in 1955 the designer presented his collection at a charity ball at Gleneagles Hotel.
At the time the designer elucidated that, “I lingered a little in Scotland. I had heard so much about its beauty that I had feared to be disappointed — on the contrary, I was even more struck by the beauty of the country, the castles, and the moors, than I expected.”
For the house’s Crieff-comeback VIP guests, fashion influencers and high spending clients were put up at the hundred year old hotel residence, with falconry, archery and pitch and putt being fairly novel activities on offer for the style-set in between selfie opportunities. The tripod-balancing content capturing was wonderfully at odds with the regulars out for a day on the course. Prior to the show, the brand hosted a lunch at nearby Scone Castle, where Dior had also staged a fund-raising charity show in 1960.
It is to Dior’s credit that it has not just come here for the photo-ops, in creating the collection the intention was to shed light on the makers behind these luxuriant clothes. Maria Grazia Chiuri, Dior’s creative director, worked with several homegrown talents including the designer Samantha McCoach of Le Kilt, hat-maker Robert Mackie and local manufacturers Harris Tweed, Johnstons of Elgin (from which an archive map of the woollen mills of Scotland was used as an emblem in the collection) and Esk Cashmere.
She drew literal inspiration from the house’s historical ties here — employing the evocative black and white imagery from the 1955 Gleneagles after party (a Celidh, of course) as an appliqué print across coats and kilts. But as ever with the designer who emblazons her feminist protestations across £500 T-shirts, there is more subversive messaging too. Chiuri took cues from the intensely evocative embroideries of Mary Queen of Scots — as documented by writer Clare Hunter, where she silently but forthrightly illustrated her fate through the medium while incarcerated.
There were also beautiful Tudor-bodiced black velvet gowns; across one leather bodice, leg-of-mutton sleeved top read in scarlet cross-stitch Fierce, Moody, Emotional, Difficult, Nag, Hysterical, Feisty, Bossy.
Naturally, there was lashings of tartan, drawing on both traditional and punkish references, low slung kilts, corseted mini dresses, draped asymmetric dresses worn haphazardly, with Chiuri citing both Vivienne Westwood and Alexander McQueen as titans of that genre at a preview backstage. Boots were hefty and worn unbuckled, ghillies came studded as were the black leather bags worn slung across the body, unicorn and thistle motifs hung from studded chokers. Armour-like crystal cropped tabards, ripped Argyle knits and high socks with leather gloves fashioned with straps running the length of the arm gave a hint of the medieval warrior and a punchy, dark grounding.
All played out to a soaring soundtrack blend of traditional bagpipes and a string instrumental of the Eurythmics, melding Scots old and (somewhat) new, with a French and Italian (Chiuri is from Rome) twist unfolding across what Chiuri described as the country’s cinematic landscape.
With the bright evening light drenching the verdant greens of the breathtaking gardens, Scotland certainly did herself proud.
