In the heart of the city dedicated to Athena, Maria Grazia Chiuri reinvents her genealogy and tweaks House codes for the Christian Dior Resort 2022 collection.

In that spirit, she created her own map of Greece, informed by the personalities and images that nourished her references and poetry, from the works of Giorgio De Chirico to vases decorated with wrestling matches by Alexandre Iolas.

Giant silhouettes stand out in close-up on sketches by the artist Pietro Ruffo, or are camouflaged on a selection of sportswear pieces. A series of white trouser suits evoking those worn by Marlene Dietrich structure a lexicon balanced between classicism and freedom: oversized houndstooth becomes Hellenized, the cannage motif takes on new abstractions, a star appears.

An alliance of heritage and modernity that – within the iconic Panathenaic Stadium, the setting for the show – reveals a manifesto for a body that more than ever enjoys liberty of movement, performing without constraint.

Both the starting point and one of the primary components of the Cruise 2022 collection, the peplos dress from ancient Greece is a fixture in the collective imagination thanks to its ubiquity in classical art. Here, Maria Grazia Chiuri and the renowned fashion historian and curator Lydia Kamitsis discuss its timelessness, architecture, universality, and how, in its traditional form, a simple length of fabric becomes a unique canvas of expression for the wearer’s identity and elegance.