Celebrities journeyed to Drummond Castle in Edinburgh to see the Mary Queen of Scots-inspired fashion presentation, the first time Dior has shown in Scotland since 1955.
After Mexico City, Athens, Marrakech, Lecce, Seville, Chantilly and Los Angeles, Dior chose Edinburgh as its latest fashion show location, which with its verdant scenery, Gothic architecture and Celtic legends transformed the Dior Cruise fashion show into something magical and fascinating.
The 2025 collection designed by Maria Grazia Chiuri paraded in the gardens of the majestic Drummond Castle in the village of Crieff, Perthshire, Scotland, built in 1491 and then rebuilt in the Victorian Age. It’s located about 9 miles from the Gleneagles hotel in the heart of the Scottish countryside, so beloved by Monsieur Dior himself, who presented his clothes to the Scottish nobility in 1955 in the hotel’s ballroom.
The fashion show opened with the sound of bagpipes, the unmistakable musical instrument typical of Scottish tradition, and then the unicorn and the thistle, symbols of Scotland, which are inserted in a new iteration of the house’s millefiori motif. The heraldic embroidery seen in the clothes calls back to the history of that technique, part of Mary Stuart’s style as detailed in Clare Hunter’s short story: Embroidering Her Truth: Mary, Queen of Scots and the Language of Power.
Art historian Hunter, with whom Chiuri has collaborated since 2020, has highlighted through her work the meaning and purpose of embroidery as a means of communication for women throughout history. Patterns and colors, compositions and symbols in the new Dior collection are a tribute to the resilience and wit of the historical figure of Mary Stuart and the author telling her story today. “In the collection we studied her history, observed paintings and focused on her aesthetics. We emphasized the political interpretation of Mary Stuart’s embroidery, it is important to remember that she used embroidery as a tool of expressive freedom,” said the designer.
The collection includes embroidered priestly robes, garments with armor effects, and dresses with “warrior cages” that reference the story of the Queen of Scots better known as Bloody Mary, who used embroidery to send messages when she was a prisoner. Wearing studs, motorcycle boots, metal thorns in braids, pearl-embroidered veils and tartan dresses, the models were transformed into real punk warriors, women who are not afraid to face life’s challenges or to send precise political messages through their style choices.
Also starring in this collection is tartan, Scotland’s iconic fabric. “The only fabric that can resist fashion,” as Dior wrote in The Little Dictionary of Fashion, of the print so often used by designers that has crossed different styles, from romantic to punk. “I worked on the kilt as a drape of fabric put over the body, to create clothes as if they were blankets draped over the silhouette,” says Chiuri.
For a dip into the past, photographic images from Dior’s 1955 Spring Summer presentation become prints or are applied on the edge of kilts or caban coats, and are also inside garments. To recollect the legacy of Mary Stuart, whose life was spent between France and Scotland, Chiuri also commissioned artist Pollyanna Johnson to create a contemporary portrait.
Numerous celebrities flocked to Dior’s court, among them, house ambassadors Anya Taylor-Joy and Jennifer Lawrence, as well as Rosamund Pike, Lily Collins, Maisie Williams, Geri Halliwell, and Beatrice and Pierre Casiraghi.
This story originally ran on The Hollywood Reporter Roma.