DUBAI: Just weeks after wowing the world with its circus-themed Spring/Summer 2019 couture show in Paris, Dior has announced that it is set to bring the show to the Middle East in what will be its first show in the region. The spectacle is set to unfold on March 18 in Dubai, although an exact location has not yet been announced. The runway show will feature looks from its couture show, staged in Paris in January, as well as a few designs exclusively for the Gulf region. For Dior’s show in the French capital in January, Italian head designer Maria Grazia Chiuri took the well-heeled crowd to the circus with arguably her most sublimely balanced collection, AFP reported at the time. A troupe of all-female acrobats of all body shapes led out the show inside a retro big top — complete with harlequin-pattern floor — built in the gardens of the Rodin Museum in the center of the French capital. Chiuri is the first woman ever to lead the mythic French label, and her feminism is never far away. All her nearly 70 models wore glittery skullcaps fastened under their chins — think aviation pioneer Amelia Earhart meets commedia dell’arte character Pierrot. But there was nothing remotely clownish about the muted elegance of the clothes, featuring lashings of embroidery and beadwork, to summon up the spirit of the circus-set 1917 ballet “Parade.” Chiuri’s designs mixed the romantic and the muscular, cutting her dreamy organza and tulle dresses with whip smart ringmaster and lion-tamer jackets, leather corsets and high-wire jumpsuits. “Every look has its own personality, just like circus characters,” she told AFP, “brave, funny, happy and sad.” “The circus is a world of its own, which passes from town to town, changing each one a little as it goes — a bit like fashion week,” the creator added. The tattooed lady, that staple of the Victorian sideshow, also got a drum roll with a look inspired by Maud Wagner, America’s first known female tattoo artist. The designer, who sports a few herself, floated surrealist neck tattoos in a previous show. Critics predicted her silk bandage roll gowns and architectural tutus would also be a hit with haute couture’s super-rich clientele, the only people who can afford the handmade creations. Previous shows have involved collaborations with women writers, musicians and choreographers. This time she worked with the female-led British acrobat company Mimbre. Chiuri said she was struck by how inclusive the circus world was, and how it offered “a possible equality... where beauty, origin, gender and age are no longer important. Only technique and daring matter.” It was this that inspired the collection’s necklaces and bracelets of interlocking gold hands. An acrobat “puts their life in the hands of another, you have to really trust each other,” she said. If her Parisian showcase was anything to go by, Dubai’s fashion elite are in for a treat on March 18.