The problem hasn't changed at all despite the fact that the house is now on its third creative director in the last two decades, and it's very unlikely that it will change because the problem really started while its most unabashedly creative designer was still there. Sure, Galliano had his breakdown and suddenly a part of why we were witnessing an increasingly stale, progressively more conservative image from the house became crystal clear -- because he wasn't functioning in his role to the best of his abilities and because other people within the brand and the corporation which owns it were exerting more control over their designer -- became clear.
That increase in control over the creative side of the business couldn't possibly have been a new thing simply in response to Galliano's downward spiral. You cannot tell me that the decision to, say, scale back the Haute Couture presentations, or to turn the ready to wear presentations into a much more straightforwardly commercial parade of boutique-ready clothing was due entirely to creative choices on Galliano's part. It may have started that way as something like a creative challenge for him, or a way to hit the proverbial reset button on his imagination, but it's just a little too convenient that within six months of showing one of his worst reviewed ready to wear collections, the Teddy Boy collection of 2004, his entire output changed, even in Haute Couture where he'd usually been given carte blanche to design whatever he liked simply because it made the house look good. He may have shown some beautiful and occasionally creative collections after that time -- the transparent couture collection, the heavy metal revolutionary ready to wear collection, the Madame Butterfly couture collection -- but the era of Galliano as King effectively ended with the Egyptian collection, thanks in no small part to the powers that be putting a muzzle on their prized show dog not long after it.
I think the choice of Raf after Galliano was proof of their altered priorities. Under him the clothes in stores were rarely threatening, or unusual, or avant garde. They weren't even particularly high fashion if the few times I went into the stores were any indication. The presentations were artsy on the surface without actually being too artsy. The advertising was straightforward. It was an easily packaged, easily marketed product that may have sold at times but never really lit a fuse and made Dior into the commercial and critical powerhouse it had been circa the year 2000/2001. There were no cult bags, no must-have shoes, no bombastic, infinitely popular perfumes. And the choice of Maria Grazia Chiuri is a totally safe choice that won't do a whole lot to upset that status quo or change the script. She'll churn out dependable collections of the sort of pretty but totally unsurprising clothes she delivered at Valentino, along with, maybe, a single shoe design that can be spun off into countless tiresome iterations along the way, and three years from now if the public is still buying, they'll keep her on.
At the end of the day Dior is run by a group of people who are the definition of conservative. They're not young or even youthful, they're not creative, they're not particularly advanced in their tastes and they likely wouldn't know how to dress a woman if their life depended on it, yet none of those clear cut facts have stopped them from interfering in a process that they have only a bare bones understanding of. The house they clearly all set out to guard from the evils of controversy, of alienating a demographic somewhere, is exactly what they've caused it to become. If it wasn't for the fact that anonymous, design team-led collections from major brands routinely get bad reviews, I highly doubt they'd bother handing anybody the title of artistic director anymore. At this house at least, the days of headline-making creativity and boundary pushing design are dead. Frankly, that they happened at all should be seen as something of a shock.
)lol
Let's first wait for HC. Like I've mentioned in my post, I'm not sure in which direction Maria want to steer the house into. Probably this will only be evident after a few campaigns (which she had part in), and a few more collections? I will add that if Maria thinks she can slide into Dior with merely an updated take on what she did for Valentino, she's in for a rude awakening. Can you imagine if Hedi goes to a new house and replicate exactly what he did at SLP? It's downright unethical in terms of creativity, I think. And I won't be surprised if Dior will very soon be up to their elbows in infringement lawsuits. I'd certainly be tremendously peed off if I was a Valentino suit. 
Definitely a guilty pleasure for me.
