Maria Grazia Chiuri studied at Istituto Europeo di Design in Rome, then entered the industry at Fendi in 1989. She was drafted into the accessories department of a house run by the Fendi sisters.

Her formative decade unfolded alongside Silvia Venturini Fendi, with whom she helped develop the Baguette bag. She also recruited Pierpaolo Piccioli into the same department, the partnership that would shape the next twenty years of her work.

Across leather goods, embroidery, and the embellished evening piece, her signature is a Roman idea of dressing. Ornament is treated as architecture, with the bag and the gown given equal weight on the rack.

She joined Valentino in 1999 as head of accessories. In 2008, she became joint creative director with Piccioli, the pair sharing womenswear, menswear, and haute couture for the Mayhoola-owned house.

The Rockstud line of studded flats, pumps, and shoulder bags arrived under her watch. Alongside ran couture gowns mining mythology, religious iconography, and Renaissance painting in tulle, lace, and hand-embroidered silk.

The Valentino of those years sat apart from the Phoebe Philo Céline and post-Helmut Lang Jil Sander conversation, trading minimalism for a maximalist Italian romanticism. She and Piccioli received the CFDA International Award in 2015, the same year the duo grew the business to $1 billion in revenue. She departed for Christian Dior in 2016.

LVMH named her artistic director of the women’s collections at Dior that summer, succeeding Raf Simons. She was the first woman to lead creation at the French house.

Her September 2016 debut sent a model out in a plain white T-shirt stamped with Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s “We Should All Be Feminists” among embroidered tulle dresses and fencing jackets. Across nine years, she reactivated the Bar jacket, reissued the Galliano-era Saddle bag, and staged couture sets with Judy Chicago and The Chanakya School of Craft.

She stepped down from Dior in 2025 with a final runway at Villa Albani Torlonia in Rome. Jonathan Anderson was named her successor, and she returned to Fendi as chief creative officer in October.

Her Fendi debut in Milan ran roughly 70 percent black, with models walking a catwalk stenciled Meno Io, Piu Noi in mid-calf negligée dresses and semi-sheer cocktails in lace and perforated leather. A collaboration with SAGG Napoli and jewelry developed with the estate of Mirella Bentivoglio placed the current chapter back inside the Roman frame where her career began.