Futuristic and light-filled, whether surgical white or colored, the set for the fall-winter 2014-2015 ready-to-wear show from Raf Simons for Dior evoked a cityscape in perpetual motion.

It started out as nighttime in the middle of the day. As the fashion show was about to get underway and with all the guests comfortably seated and holding their breath, the runway was plunged into a bluish dusk. In the murky light - the result of inky-blue spotlights - forms disappeared, the outlines of the space blurred. And, suddenly, they left back into sharp focus. As the show music burst forth from the speakers, Raf Simons' Dior women appeared, bringing the light of a new day with them, and revealing an urban space distilled to its simplest expression: pure architecture and light. The light was colored and changing, moving from deepest green to pale pink, and then to the brightest white, as though a phalanx of neon was illuminating an abstract and romantic city. The forest of spots and LEDs that diffused it from a futuristic suspended garden of greenery and luminescent flowers gave the impression of a whole new kind of city. 

“I wanted to approach the idea of the city as an abstraction, it is how I perceive the world of the city in this collection,” , Raf Simons explains. “It is an idea of the romantic and the real, a world of possibilities" And, indeed, nothing seems to fetter the powerful energy of the Dior women who inhabit it: glowing with light and with a defiant walk, they impose the strength of their femininity.