Maria Grazia Chiuri loves to name a muse. For this women’s collection, that muse was literary icon Virginia Woolf and her 1920 novel Orlando. For the uninitiated, Orlando follows the namesake character, Orlando, across three centuries. It begins with Orlando as a young nobleman in Elizabeth’s England, then progresses at midpoint to Orlando awakening as a woman and surviving until the novel’s end in the 1920s, a pivotal point in women’s suffrage.

Grazia Chiuri’s Dior is not the first to sentimentalise English aristocracy this fashion month (see: Burberry). Across five mini-shows in one (a nod to the source material’s experimental, blockish structure) Chiuri reimagines, with frequent references to past creative directors including Gianfranco Ferré, the wardrobe of a time-travelling noblesse with a modern understanding of femininity’s fluidity.

The collection included detachable ‘Orlando’ ruffs and later, Elizabethan collars, which superimposed Tudor times onto more modern and, in a few cases, utilitarian, ensembles. Outerwear ranged from trenches, equestrian jackets, tailcoats and faux ermine shrugs to treated acidy leather, which, alongside velvet, was made to look sometimes brocade-ish. Knee-high sheer black socks, pantaloons, ruffled white ‘period’ shirts, and overwhelmingly flat shoes sparked the vision of the Dior-clad hero/ine on the go.

In one of the several delicate, blushy-cream lace looks, a collared jacket and ruched shorts were punctuated by a rigid ribbon, hanging between the model’s legs, right down to her ankles. In another, a multilayered accordion skirt sashays beneath a white button-down, cinched with a zippered corset and beneath an appliquéd jacket.

Roughly halfway through the show, the coordinated sets emerged. Moto leather jackets, with their sleeves unzipped paired with knee-length leather pants, were juxtaposed with sheer doily-like blouses of lace.

In tandem with the frivolous frills and ruffle-shaped chokers, refreshing gowns created some much-needed distance from the summer show, which this show’s pared-back palette and dark staging followed on from. In further contrast to the former show, this one had some looks left intentionally, and deliciously, ‘undone’—take the unclipped pantaloons or the untied and askew collar atop the halter-neck ivory gown toward the end.

The closing look, a dandy-esque combination of beret, netted veil, loafers and a cape over pleated trousers and a high-necked sheer white button-down, was precisely the picture of Orlando romping around amongst 1800s English society. The reappraisal of centuries past is Chiuri’s special sauce; she is good at it (I can’t help but think of Dior’s Cruise 2025 show in Penrith, Scotland.)

The writing of Orlando, in fact, coincided with the popularisation of more masculine silhouettes and modes of dressing in proper society, a confusion (and liberation) of gender. For her part, Woolf’s muse for Orlando was her beloved Vita Sackville-West, the titled bisexual, cross-dressing novelist and poet, whose writing and very life challenged the social norms of England at the time.

It makes sense that Grazia Chiuri, who has so consistently championed female empowerment during her tenure at Dior, would appropriate a love letter to the full spectrum of fluidity in femininity for what, according to rumours, might be one of her last collections as Creative Director.

I fear I’ll be fossilised for some time too, awaiting the Dior-sponsored remake of Sally Potter’s Orlando. Fingers crossed they bring Tilda Swinton back for it!