Inside the Musée Rodin, Dior’s spring-summer 2025 RTW collection began with an arrow shot straight down the runway. Maria Grazia Chiuri had a vision of “Amazonian” beauty, according to makeup artist Peter Philips, and thus tapped archer and artist SAGG Napoli to deliver one of the most exhilarating moments of fashion month. Napoli drew the string back on her bow—and with the release of a single arrow (whizzing past a model!) the show began.
“May the building of a strong mind and a strong body be the greatest work I have ever made” was scrawled on the walls inside, and show notes read “SAGG Napoli sees fashion as a visual attribute, an affirmation of her athletic shape.” Fittingly, the beauty backstage felt like a sequel to the summer’s gilded haute couture beauty tribute to the Olympic and Paralympic Games Paris, this time an “apres-sport” look that Philips interpreted with a runway iteration of boyfriend blush. “A bit like a workout blush” is how he described the post-run “flushed” look he created by brushing shades of the new Rouge Blush Colour & Glow palette in 100 Diorissimo, 200 Diorama, and 757 Wildior onto models’ cheeks.
“It’s about strong women” Philips continued, noting that models could have just wrapped a workout or “come from a heroic battlefield” in this fantasy world. After “randomly” applying a bit of Diorshow On Stage Crayon in 099 Black to the lower waterline, he asked models to squeeze their eyes shut tightly (one of his signature tricks for haphazard, not-too-perfect definition) for a sooty look as if their liner had trailed down their face in the action. The “glorified sweaty” skin from the couture runway returned in a more subtle variation with carefully applied Dior Capture Totale Le Sérum. Just before they walked the runway, he applied extra serum to the face as a final touch, “to get more of a wet effect.”
Just down the tented, brightly lit backstage corridor, hairstylist Guido Palau did the opposite of a wet look, with what he described as “a very non-product feeling to the hair.” It was sporty, yes, with “a nineties vibe where you put your headband on and you just put it up in a very easy way,” he said of tying loops of hair with elastic and letting the ends hang out loosely, the only accessories including stretchy headbands emblazoned with the Dior logo. “So you get a loop and a flick out, and then the headband pulls it together because it gives you a fashion moment for me,” Palau explained of the “quite techy” take on the kind of updo women want to wear today.