5 minutes to meet Maria Grazia Chiuri

If not now when? Those were the words of Maria Grazia Chiuri to her husband after the proposal to become creative director of Christian Dior. The 17-year-old designer, who already had an extraordinary career at Valentino, did not hesitate to take charge of the situation and venture into what has undoubtedly been her greatest love story. In 2016, she finally became the first woman in charge of the maison, and since then, she has enchanted us with her talent and vision in every collection.

Born in Rome in 1964, Maria had strong influences in her own family. His father was in the military, however, his mother was a dressmaker.

In 1989, Maria joined the Fendi family. A decade later, she joined Valentino. In fact, around that time, Dior set its sights on the designer and contacted her to take over the bag line (a proposal that she ruled out). But when something is destined to happen, the circumstances don't matter. Maria would hear back from the maison…

Years later, Sidney Toledano appointed her artistic director of Dior's women's collections , and thus, in the glorious 2016, she became the worthy successor to Raf Simons and also the first woman to hold this position since the creation of the signature.

In September of the same year, she presented his first collection in Paris. The audience was in awe, as Maria not only brought a fresh and effortless perspective to the brand, but was loaded with feminist references (how can we forget the We Should All Be Feminists T -shirt, from the acclaimed essay by Nigerian Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie). Subsequently, for his 2018 collection, he captured Linda Nochlin 's essay : Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists? With this action it was clear that the creative was concerned about social issues such as gender discrimination and feminist claims.

In her pieces, we have also been able to observe environmental and cultural overtones. For Maria Grazia Chiuri, fashion is political.

Maria Grazia Chiuri has by nature the ability to turn everything she touches into gold (her talent to grow international brands exponentially in a few years is mythical). In a way, she's like a Midas goddess within the fashion industry .

Her most iconic creations were immortalized in the book Her Dior, published by the French firm, which compiles the work of a series of photographers who beautifully captured the work of Grazia Chiuri as director of the house. And it is that since her arrival at Dior, the Italian decided that she would only work with female photographers, since the male gaze has been characterized by dominating the images that we consume every day, and, as a consequence, the conception that we have of women since childhood.