Spotlight on Seville Style: Dior Cruise 23  - The Gloss Magazine

Spotlight on Seville Style: Dior Cruise 23 

Maria Grazia Chiuri, creative director of Dior, mined Seville’s sartorial heritage for the Dior Cruise 2023 collection

Seville has reputation as being more pijo or posh than other Andalusian cities and its residents, the Sevillanos, pride themselves on their fashion credentials as well as their history. Seville is the birthplace of tapas (try El Rinconcillo), and the home of artists such as Diego Velázquez and Bartolomé Esteban Murillo. It’s also synonymous with flamenco culture. Every year the city hosts the “Feria de Abril”, when flamenco and fiesta come together in a flamboyant pageant of music, dance and fashion. During the celebrations, many men and women wear traditional costume – for women that’s the traje de gitano, or gypsy suit, or ruffled flamenco dresses in bright colours, accessorised with a matching manton or fringed shawl, and fan. For men, particularly those on horseback, there is the traje corto – a suit consisting of fitted trousers, a short fitted jacket and wide-brimmed hat. 

Maria Grazia Chiuri, creative director of Dior, clearly mined Seville’s sartorial heritage for the Dior Cruise 2023 collection. This was held in the city’s majestic Plaza de Espana – a natural catwalk. Shaped like a half circle, the plaza was built for the Ibero-American Exposition of 1929 and mixes elements of baroque, Renaissance and Moorish architectural styles. Chiuri was also following in the footsteps of Christian Dior. In the 1950s, Mr Dior was inspired by the silhouettes of Spanish – he named a 1954 dress “Nuits d’Espagne” and a 1956 haute couture model “Bal a Seville.” 

Chiuri mixed styles and silhouettes – from streamlined equestrian looks complete with riding boots and whip – to billowing dresses with layered skirts and fringed shawls. Luxurious textures – from suede to velvet to taffeta and black lace – amplified the daring and dramatic colour palette which was mainly in signature primaries of white, black and red, with accents of camel and ochre.

The show was also inspired by dancer and feminist icon Carmen Amaya, known as La Capitana – she performed flamenco in high-waisted trousers traditionally reserved for male performers. It was her “freedom to dance and rewrite the rules, combining power and fragility through her art” which appealed to Chiuri, who was also inspired by the legendary society figure the Duchess of Alba, a flamenco fashion icon until her death in 2014.  

As for the style takeaways: no doubt the bolero jackets, waistcoats, high-waisted trousers, capes and taffeta dresses will have cross generational appeal. The collection also reveals that we’re still not done with Eighties fashion references; www.dior.com.

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