Believe it or not, Jonathan Anderson has finally run out of Dior firsts to debut. This time, he took us to the Tuileries Garden, sun shining suspiciously bright between the Louvre and Place de la Concorde in Paris’ 1st arrondissement. Turns out even the French weather’s rooting for Anderson’s Dior. For anyone who actually opened the show’s invitation, it all made sense, that little grey box held miniatures of the Tuileries’ signature green chairs, somehow stealing the spotlight from their full-sized counterparts.
Anderson took the flower thing seriously, but who doesn’t love flowers? (If you’re the odd one out, zip it, I fear his reaction.) The maison’s usual white tent in the Tuileries was not an option this season. Building a bridge over a pond full of fake water lilies, then a loop around the audience’s very own glasshouse, though, was. And it became the runway, giving the impression that Monet’s water lilies at the nearby Musée de l’Orangerie had risen from their frames for a Dior cameo.
“I think that’s what’s quite interesting about parks somehow. Historically, Dior has always shown here. I always think of Pleasure Gardens, or even in Britain you have this idea of the promenade, people used to dress to go somewhere,” Anderson told Bella Freud from one of those green chairs, just minutes before the show. And what does one wear to go to the park, you ask? A Dior bar jacket, for starters. One reinterpreted as a tiny gray cardigan with peplum flair, teamed with a white tutu that looks like it borrowed a few layers from a wedding cake, somehow thinking it’s a skirt and a cloud, complete with a train waving hello in the wind. Now picture it in a trio of looks that could be distant cousins.
Poiret-inspired balloon pants and frock coats lined in shearing followed. Alongside, Mnsr. Dior’s 1949 “Junon” gown details, embellished jeans, asymmetrical skirts, scarf-wrapped shirts, dots, tulle, feathers, furry hems, lilies on pumps, and a whole lot of light drapes and floaty volumes to make your head spin. And somewhere between the ateliers and the pond, I remembered why we watch these shows, for the outfits, yes, but mostly for the existential questions they sneak in. Are we dressing bodies, or ideas? Who really inhabits the space, us or the garden? And right now, I’m just left wondering if I need a tutu for my next stroll.
