She punctuated her 2026 cruise collection with 31 haute couture looks, out of a total of 80 outfits. In doing so, she combined luxury ready-to-wear – marketed as "affordable" and expected to sell like hotcakes worldwide – with the most demanding and elitist craftsmanship that fashion has to offer. In another context, that might have been considered sacrilege. But on the evening of May 27, in the gardens of the Villa Albani Torlonia, Maria Grazia Chiuri was simply bidding farewell (made official two days later) to Dior, where she had overseen the women's collections for nine years, producing eight collections each year. After months of persistent rumors about her departure, and as the fashion industry has experienced an unprecedented shuffle among major luxury houses this past year, this singular runway show, exceptional in more ways than one, became the final piece in a long series of clues.

When Dior announced on November 26, 2024, that its next cruise collection would be unveiled in Rome, the urban legend – "The day she leaves, Maria Grazia will show in her hometown" – made a vigorous comeback. On January 31, Dior Men announced the departure of its creative director, Kim Jones, leaving the position vacant. In February, at the start of Paris Fashion Week for womenswear, the Dior show, conceived in collaboration with stage director Bob Wilson, left guests with a strange impression: The scenes, tinged with an end-of-the-world mood, had a retrospective quality, blending the house's iconic moments and evoking a dialogue between the past (with nods to Dior under Gianfranco Ferré and John Galliano) and the present – seeming to turn a page and make way for a new chapter.

Many observers saw this as "Maria Grazia's last ready-to-wear collection." The same strange feeling was felt in Kyoto during the Pre-Fall show on April 15, likely due to the announcement, a month earlier, of Jonathan Anderson's departure from Loewe (LVMH), with "those in the know" already sensing he was headed to Dior. That intuition was confirmed on April 17, two days after Kyoto, by a press release announcing his appointment as artistic director of Dior's menswear collections.

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