At Christian Dior, Maria Grazia Chiuri worked to turn a legacy house into a home. She had, after all, come from Rome, where she worked with two family businesses, Fendi and Valentino. The first woman to helm the maison that Monsieur Dior built, she was also one of the few female creative directors in luxury. Her approach to the history of the maison was generous and inclusive, making sure to reference all of the head designers (including Yves Saint Laurent, Marc Bohan, Gianfranco Ferré, and John Galliano) who came before her. “If you think only about M. Dior, I think that you have lost your heritage,” she told Vogue’s Hamish Bowles, pointing out that Christian Dior himself was at the helm of the company he created for only 10 years.

Declaring craft to be preeminent, Chiuri worked with extended families of artisans from all over the world to create magic embellishments on light-as-air dresses. Building out from there, she always kept kindred female spirits—empathetic feminists you might say—fully in her vision. The designer wasn’t subtle about her agenda, which she set out from her first collection for the house, spring 2017, via a T-shirt that borrowed its slogan from the title of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s thoughtful essay, “We Should All Be Feminists.”

What Chiuri accomplished at Dior was to convert words into action. Grace Wales Bonner was invited to reinterpret the curvy Bar jacket one season, and it was recreated for the French singer/songwriter Yseult, who represents a different beauty ideal than that put forward by the house founder. More broadly, Chiuri embraced the natural body. Pulling elements from dance, sport, and Grecian styles, she freed women’s natural form within the dress, providing support where needed without imposing it. The result, as can be seen in the photographs below, is modern woman-friendly couture, executed with a light and expert touch.