Dior creates fashion odyssey in French Pavilion at World Expo, opening Sunday in Osaka

The House of Dior has created a fashion odyssey that will be the key installation inside the French Pavilion at the 2025 World Expo in Osaka, which opens this Sunday.

Dior Bar suits and Medallion chair on display at the Osaka World Expo – DR

Dior’s display is a blend of fine art, haute couture, sporting excellence, architecture, fragrances, original sketches, 3D printing and hundreds of toiles.

The Paris-based couture maison is very much on a full-court press in Japan. On Tuesday, it stages its fall women’s ready-to-wear collection in the historic city of Kyoto. Today, it released its latest campaign, where the house’s couturier, Maria Grazia Chiuri, is inspired by the Land of the Rising Sun.

Dior Fall 2025 campaign – Yuriko Takagi

Seen in a series of graceful, poetic shots by Yuriko Takagi, a faithful collaborator of the house, the campaign features a fusion of Japanese savoir-faire and French couture through designs that revisit the traditional kimono jacket, with its ample and enveloping lines adorned by an enchanting garden sketched on silk.

Embroidered silhouettes from Dior’s Fall 2025 campaign – Yuriko Takagi

In Osaka, Dior’s installation is organized around the theme of “Hymne à l’amour,” in a tribute to the fervor for craftsmanship and handmade work, reflecting the excellence of Parisian haute couture.

A plural homage to the beauty produced by gestures, embodied alternately by a Rodin sculpture, the timeless Bar suit – a symbol of Dior elegance presented in three variations: blue, white and red – and by the legendary “Amphores Tricolores” designed by Christian Dior in 1949 and reissued for the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

Echoing the first vocation of Christian Dior, who aspired to become an architect before turning to couture, is the Lady Dior bag reinterpreted by Japanese architect Kazuyo Sejima for the “Lady Dior – As Seen By” project in 2024.

Back in Paris, Sejima’s best-known building is the futurist glass structure that ripples along the Rue de Rivoli, acting as the entrance to the Art Nouveau La Samaritaine department store, which is controlled by luxury conglomerate LVMH, the owner of Dior.

Signature looks with floral embroidery from Dior’s Fall 2025 campaign – Yuriko Takagi

Turning to fashion, precious three-dimensional expressions of original sketches and more than 400 emblematic white toiles—presented on different scales—are spotlighted at the heart of a monumental installation. All are placed alongside bottles of iconic Dior fragrances, reinterpreted through 3D printing. In the center, Dior models come to life in poetic images created by Japanese artist Yuriko Takagi.

The installation features a dreamlike choreography punctuated by the works of Japanese designer Tokujin Yoshioka, who revisited the iconic Medallion chair in 2021.