Dior's First Female Designer Brings Feminism to the Runway

Maria Grazia Chiuri is Dior's first female creative director in the house's 70-year history, and it appears she is taking her history-making role rather seriously. On the runway this past Friday, she debuted the new line for Paris Fashion Week, along with a clear, unflinching message: "We should all be feminists."

The show notes highlighted Chiuiri's emphasis on feminism as a "recurring word" for the designer.

The line itself, of course, comes from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's 2013 TED Talk, which was famously sampled in Beyoncé's "Flawless." Since it's been a minute since Beyoncé's eponymous surprise album, the full quote reads as follows:

"We teach girls to shrink themselves, to make themselves smaller. We say to girls, you can have ambition, but not too much. You should aim to be successful, but not too successful. Otherwise, you would threaten the man. Because I am female, I am expected to aspire to marriage. I am expected to make my life choices always keeping in mind that marriage is the most important. Now marriage can be a source of joy and love and mutual support but why do we teach girls to aspire to marriage and we don’t teach boys the same? We raise girls to see each other as competitors not for jobs or accomplishments, which I think can be a good thing, but for the attention of men. We teach girls that they cannot be sexual beings in the way that boys are."

That's quite a message to deliver to the fashion world. Especially from a woman in such a significant position for the very first time. Head over to Vogue for a look at her debut collection in its entirety.

Related:  10 Badass Young Feminists Who Are Totally Changing the Game in 2016