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Debra Shaw in Dior Cruise 2025 for 'Highland Fling' | AOC on History of Scottish Women Art of Living

Maria Grazia Chiuri staged her Dior Cruise 2025 show in the gardens of Drummond Castle in Scotland, with bagpipes making the occasion. The winter Luxe issue of Grazia UK [IG] features top model Debra Shaw wearing key pieces from the Dior Cruise 2025 collection, lensed by Silvana Trevale [IG] at the Gleneagles Hotel in Perthshire, Scotland.

“Scotland is an important reference in the fashion world,” Chiuri told press before the 2025 Cruise show, “and I wanted to interpret it in a different way. For my generation, it’s so associated with punk, but there is another way to go into it, and that’s through the textiles.

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Dior’s Maria Grazia Chiuri Always Finds the Unique Makers for Her Collections

In fashion we concentrate so much on shape, Chiuri continued: “But textiles are a big part of our job—what you can do with them, and the changes you can make through them.” So, Chiuri went to the traditional—the tartan and cashmeres, the tweeds and the Argyles—and deftly filtered them into a collection which variously drew on the geopolitics of fabrics.

Her phrase “the geopolitics of fabrics” drove Anne into a deep research breakthroughs on women’s history.

AOC Shares a Women’s History Lesson

The history of women living in what is now Scotland — we learned that beyond their work in domestic responsibilities, women were also active in providing agricultural labor.

Less known is the reality women were also involved in trade and crafts. Many women engaged in spinning, weaving, and dyeing, producing textiles that were used within their communities or traded for other goods. In some instances, women could wield significant influence within the clan structure, particularly in matrilineal societies where lineage and inheritance were traced through the mother's line. Moreover, women could act as mediators and peacekeepers, using their familial connections to resolve disputes.

It’s indisputable that women’s early lives in Scotland were a more expansive tableau of responsibilities and influence.

New AOC Must-Dos: Understanding the Middle Ages, the Paypal Mafia and Pete Hegseth’s Tattoos

Anne co-wrote this article with AOC’s AI for scholars resource, and it has been an eye-opener in helping her piece-together the story of how and why women lost so much power across Europe, during the period of the Middle Ages. Her focus has largely been the period of 10,000 BC to the death of Jesus Christ and rise of early Christianity.

The period Middle Ages is considered to begin with the fall of the Western Roman Empire and ends around the start of the Renaissance, generally spanning from 500 AD to 1500 AD. It begins with the fall of the Western Roman Empire and ends with the start of the Renaissance.

In our pursuit of humanism as reflecting AOC’s values and the scaffolding that defines this website’s world view, we’ve neglected researching the Middle Ages. Additionally, Anne told her close friend over the weekend that she has neglected understanding better the current politics of the Paypal Mafia, ‘led’ by Peter Thiel but ‘blessed’ with its most visible member Elon Musk.

For the record, AOC finds Thiel’s arguments about conservatism to be far more interesting and insightful than Musk’s desire to just blow up the federal government in his unelected role as co-president of America. No, Thiel did not say that women should not have the vote. Thiel did make an economic case for what happens when women do have the vote, and AOC will explain it fairly.

Additionally, we will take on US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s tattoos, which are deeply embedded in beliefs attached to the Middle Ages and a violent and bloody time in human history.

Sending Love Always to Maria Grazia Chiuri at Dior

Yes, AOC friends, ALL of these questions, research and learnings were triggered by a Grazia UK fashion story featuring Maria Grazia Chiuri’s Dior Cruise 2025 show, held in the gardens of Drummond Castle in Scotland, with bagpipes making the occasion. See link top of page for the entire story.

We know AOC is intellectually demanding, but it exists for a deeper purpose.

AOC’s own association with bagpipes comes from the solemn funerals in New York City in the days after September 11, 2001. That day is very formative in making Anne the woman who founded Anne of Carversville in 2007.