In a striped circus tent in Paris, nine pairs of rope-muscled female acrobats twisted and braided around each other until each couple had moved from a standing embrace to a double-height figure, with one woman standing on the shoulders of another. Dressed in custom-made Christian Dior playsuits, they then walked in their teetering pairs to the centre ring, where they rearranged themselves into a human archway for the models who followed them on to the catwalk.

Maria Grazia Chiuri on fashion, feminism and Dior: ‘You must fight for your ideas’ Read more

With a monumental exhibition about to open at the Victoria and Albert museum, this Christian Dior haute couture made the point that Dior, under first female designer Maria Grazia Chiuri, is as relevant to the future of fashion as to its history. This was Dior as politics and showbiz, not Dior as pomp and ceremony. With an all-female, all-body-shapes acrobatic company and evening dresses that referenced the “androgynous and asexual” aesthetic of the clown, Chiuri showed that there is much more to Dior than the full-skirted “new look”.

In the slipstream of the phenomenal success of 2017 film The Greatest Showman, the circus is having a born-again pop cultural moment. The striped tent is a place “where beauty, origin, gender and age are no longer important, and only technique and daring matter,” as Chiuri’s show notes put it. “In a circus parade it is not just about being beautiful, it is about being proud, about being strong, about being bold and having fun,” she said backstage before the show. Rather than filling her head with archive images, her work on the upcoming exhibition had made her “think about fashion as an expression of society. In a fashion exhibition you can see in clothes the values of society changing. My job as the designer of Dior now is to make fashion that is connected to contemporary society.”

Chiuri, set designer Shona Heath, and Lina Johansson, choreographer of the London-based Mimbre theatre group, together devised a show in which acrobats formed human pyramids around the models. “Honouring an idea of femininity that is powerful, free and determined,” they aimed for “an inclusive and feminist [show that] echoes Chiuri’s own active commitment”.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘The women who buy haute couture these days don’t just want party dresses.’ Photograph: Stephane Cardinale/Corbis via Getty Images

Since Chiuri took over Dior, the influence of this venerable brand on fashion as it is worn on the street has become more direct. The “We Should All Be Feminists” T-shirts from Chiuri’s first show turned feminist-slogan T-shirts from an alternative fashion choice into a worldwide commercial hit that was picked up all along the high street.

Quieter but no less pervasive has been the influence of her chosen skirt shape – long and softly full – which has seen skirts with lower hemlines and a softer silhouette become a mainstay in the modern wardrobe. This season, those skirts came in boiled wool, in black tulle and in knotted lamé. Flame embroidery, sequinned hot pants, and ringmaster jackets with flourishes of gold frogging kept the circus spirit alive. Black tailoring, which is what Chiuri most often wears herself, was less attention-grabbing, but brilliantly executed. As the designer noted: “The women who buy haute couture these days don’t just want party dresses.”