Dior designer Maria Grazia Chiuri celebrates rebel women of the past at the Paris Fashion Week

Maria Grazia Chiuri, the first woman to lead the magnanimous fashion house, Christian Dior, set the show on fire by cheering rebel women of the past.

The Dior collection at the Paris Fashion Week was a tribute to the women’s liberation movement of the 1970's that shook the world in all its glory.

Models walk under three traffic light-coloured neon signs flashing with the word "Consent."

Chiuri sent her models out under three traffic light-coloured neon signs flashing with the word "Consent", just around the time Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein was finally found guilty of rape by a US court.

Several other neon signs hammered home the designer's well-known feminist and environmental beliefs, including "Women's Love is Unpaid Labour", "When Women Strike, the World Stops" and "Patriarchy = CO2".

Others like "Women are the Moon that Moves the Tides" were quietly poetic but just as powerful.

Chiuri's clothes were a contemporary take on the decade.

 Bandana scarves

Chiuri said her clothes were a contemporary take on the decade that revolutionised relations between the sexes.

And the counterculture references were there from the start, with most of her models wearing bandana scarves on their heads.

Poncho coats, charm chains and shearling-lined suede boots and typical 1970s checks and argyle patterns ran cheek by jowl with more restrained black Dior classics.

Designer Maria Grazia Chiuri appears at the end of her women's ready-to-wear collection show for fashion house Dior.

There were also glimpses of Chiuri's schoolgirl past in a handful of looks where she teamed big very un-Dior work boots with clothes that had echoes of customised school uniforms.

She also sent out a run of looks pairing lace knee-high socks with Mary Jane shoes.

Chiuri said that she was transported back to the period reading her teenage diary, which contained quite a few surprises.

"I had not realised that all my references began to form during my adolescence. The 1970s had a big influence on what made me," the 57-year-old said.

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With Hollywood stars including Demi Moore, Sigourney Weaver and Rachel Brosnahan in the front row, the show was also a tribute to the Italian feminist thinker and art critic Carla Lonzi.

Street fashion

Chiuri has had a big effect on street fashion since she took the reins at Dior three years ago, bringing the beret back into fashion in her first two shows.

As well as the bandana/gypsy scarves, her schoolgirl take on the 1970s is likely to be widely copied, with ties under leather jackets, as well as her vintage checks and argyles.