It’s a jungle out here at the haute couture shows in Paris, the fashion world’s equivalent to the World Cup. Nowhere more so was this true than at Dior’s show this afternoon, which had all the ingredients of a David Attenborough documentary: exotic birdlike creations, a tropical treescape, sweltering heat, and a room full of fashion’s apex predators — the 0.001 percent of women who are couture clients.
Fresh from designing Taylor Swift’s couture wedding dress, Jonathan Anderson’s sophomore collection drew on his longstanding relationship with a much more niche female artist: the 84-year-old American sculptor Lydia Benglis, whom he previously collaborated with at Loewe. Last season, Anderson explained that he sees Dior’s couture ateliers as laboratories for making the most impossible concepts come to life — ideas that can inform ready-to-wear and, perhaps, make people think about clothes differently. This time around, he took his cues from Benglis’s swirling sculptures and practices of knotting, pleating, and molding — as well as her relationship to Ahmedabad, a city in Gujarat, India, which she has been visiting and working in for over 30 years.
“Some of the most important embroidery is done in India, and we don’t talk about it enough,” he explained before the show. “You don’t realize what color is until you go there. The skills there are hundreds of years old, and fashion wouldn’t exist without it — it’s skills we don’t have.” Much of this collection employed Indian craftsmanship, drawing on the history of chintz, the eighteenth-century Indian craft of finely woven cottons typically hand-painted or block-printed with botanical motifs, and onyx and crystal jewelry crafted in Jaipur.
Anderson’s talent lies in spotting esoteric figures and bringing them into the institutional fold of fashion, and throughout his career, his work has often been strongest at its most sculptural. For much of her early career, Benglis was unexhibited, so much so that she resorted to taking an ad out in Artforum in 1964: a centerfold of herself naked, wearing white sunglasses and holding a comically large double dildo between her thighs, in order to get her radical work seen. Now, her sculptures have been transformed into elegant plissé dresses, iridescent beaded chiffons, and bronzed metallic pleats exploding around the body. Her peacock-inspired fans, originally made with found objects from her time in India, came splayed across long, sinuous silk gowns. Only a handful of years ago, this might have felt like a runway party trick, but looking at the clients in the room, one could spot plenty of outrageous dressers who would wear something like that.
There were enough ideas in this collection to engage even the most attention-deficit viewer.
There were enough ideas in this collection to engage even the most attention-deficit viewer. What is clear is that Anderson, in the realm of couture, is leaning into the floral femininity of Dior’s heritage: petal-laden suits, trompe l’oeil bows, mille-feuille layers of silk chiffon. There’s enough here to elicit a symphony of sighs from girly girls and whet the appetite of more sartorially savory tastes: streamlined shawl-collared Bar jackets, simple knotted silk shirts, and robed coats made of strips of merino shearling. Occasionally, it even gets a bit conceptual for the advanced avant-garde dresser: chicken-wire patchwork skirts, frayed hems, and crinkled, crumpled fabrics that felt like a radical departure from Dior’s previous era.
Looking around at the clientele, who have quickly adapted to Anderson’s Dior with knotted Bar jackets, draped gowns, and sculptural hats, it’s clear that many of these women see themselves as works of art. As far as ’70s feminist performance art goes, that’s hardly a new idea — but it’s still perhaps a quietly subversive act on Anderson’s part.
For mere mortals, the main takeaways are equally compelling: a perfect pair of pants can be just as elegant as a ballgown, and funky, fabulous shoes — feathered, sequined, laden with frothy floral embellishments — are firmly back on the agenda.
