Maria Grazia Chiuri continued her radical shake-up of the fabled French label with a rhapsody in navy blue -- the colour the label's founder Christian Dior said was "the only one which can ever compete with black".
The Italian designer marked her arrival last year with T-shirts bearing the slogan "We should all be feminists."
She took her empowerment message a step further on Friday with a sober and hugely surprising collection that mixed blue jeans with taffeta and velvet.
The show's guests were given a white bandana printed with her -- and now Dior's -- definition of a feminist: "A person who believes in the social, political and economic equality of the sexes."
The white bandana has been adopted as a symbol of resistance on fashion catwalks against politicians peddling division, a tilt at US President Donald Trump among others.
The contrast with the dreamy romanticism of Chiuri's first haute couture collection for the label in January could not have been starker.
Then she wowed critics with one dreamlike ball gown after another, which the New York Times described as "sheer romance".
In contrast, her autumn-winter ready-to-wear collection rarely strayed from navy blue and black, as if to acknowledge the hard word needed to achieve the equality she espouses.
Her models were in a big hurry -- worker ants out to revolutionise their world.
