Dior to unveil autumn 2023 collection in Mumbai

The French fashion house will present a show at the Gateway of India monument

The Gateway of India is one of Mumbai's best-known landmarks. Photo: Dior

Dior will hold its autumn 2023 womenswear show in Mumbai.

Paying homage to Christian Dior’s admiration for India, the new collection will be unveiled by the maison's current creative director, Maria Grazia Chiuri, on March 30, at the Gateway of India, an arch monument that was built in 1911 to commemorate a visit to the city by King George V and Queen Mary.

The event is being held with the support of the government of Maharashtra’s directorate of tourism. “For Maria Grazia Chiuri, each collection is an opportunity to make new connections between different domains of craftsmanship, ancestral traditions and the most ground-breaking innovation,” Dior said in a statement.

This is not the first time that the French fashion house has held one of its shows at a historic monument. For its autumn 2023 menswear collection, Dior decamped to Cairo, presenting 75 looks with the illuminated Pyramids of Giza as a backdrop.

Dubbed Celestial, the collection and show were inspired by a “fascination with the ancient world” and “how the past shapes the future or an idea of the future from the past”, Kim Jones, creative director for Dior Men wrote in his show notes. The collection referenced its North African locale with a palette that featured neutral greys, beiges and whites interspersed with pops of bright yellow and orange.

Jones called it a graduation of greys giving way to a “palette of the desert — from daytime to nightfall, with hints of a fiery sunset filtering in between”. Models looked like they were headed on a sci-fi expedition to the moon or “galaxies far, far away”, donning sunglasses, helmets, backpacks, utility boots and mosquito netting as a form of “futuristic armoury”.

The event attracted a high-profile audience that included Formula One champion Sir Lewis Hamilton, British actor Robert Pattinson, Scottish actor Thomas Doherty, South Korean rapper and Dior Global Ambassador Oh Se-hun, Spanish actor Aron Piper, Colombian singer Manuel Turizo and American model Amber Valletta.

Chiuri will no doubt be aiming to recreate some of this magic in India at the end of the month.