There was an elephant on the front row at the Dior couture show Monday in Paris, sandwiched somewhere between Sabrina Carpenter and Ejae and looming over all the proceedings: the still-secret design of the Dior wedding dress Taylor Swift had worn a mere three days earlier.
Was it more classic — i.e., cliché — Dior, or the more current, somewhat challenging Dior? Was it princess-y? Prom-like? Kinda conceptual? Was it, in other words, more like the image that Swift has been presenting to the world, at least onstage, or more like the one that the newish designer Jonathan Anderson has been building for the brand?
At a preview earlier in the day it was all anyone was whispering about (Anderson ducked his head and declined to comment). Ditto in the fern-filled environs of the show space, an open pavilion in the gardens of the Musée Rodin. A spokesman for the brand promised all would be revealed — at some point, after Swift herself posts the first pictures on her Instagram. They just weren’t sure when that might be.
The show didn’t necessarily offer any clues. But it did demonstrate why Swift might have thought Dior was the right brand for her in the first place.
It wasn’t the clothes. It wasn’t even one giant brand recognizing another. It was their shared aims on culture — high or mass, no matter.
Not that the clothes themselves weren’t pretty great. Indeed, Anderson seems to understand as essentially as anyone working today the singular nature of couture, and the luxury of being able to make one-off pieces for the very few that are limited by neither cost nor imagination. His work is increasingly both notably intricate and apparently relaxed, a tough balancing act to pull off.
Take, for example, a grass-green day dress made from vertical waves of fabric tipped in silver foil so it seemed to change color with every step, but which turned out to be knitted “like a sock,” Anderson said. Or coats made of thin strips of shearling layered on transparent georgette, so they looked like chenille. Or a cashmere jersey jacket in a Bar-like shape lined in peach silk over cashmere pants, like a couture version of a Juicy Couture sweatsuit. Everything was soft and fluid, without falling into the trap of the flou.
Anderson is essentially de-structuring Dior, freeing it from the crinolines and stays (progress!) as well as the rote adherence to tradition, but somehow keeping the familiar shapes, so they become easier to wear (they look almost pajama-comfortable). Or would be — except he has filled them instead with references and inspirations. Sometimes overfilled them. It’s both a feat of genuine fashion engineering and a sleight of hand.
This time around that took the form of an ode to the 84-year-old American artist Lynda Benglis, who has worked between India and Santa Fe, N.M., and whose pieces offer a sort of feminist challenge to the legacy of abstract expressionism as well the boundaries between painting and sculpture.
In Anderson’s hands that led to some good ideas, such as pleated metallic dresses that flicked at Benglis’s crumpled metallic creations; floral embroideries replete with ferns, cactuses and eucalyptus rather than the usual Dior roses; and looks tied with a bow at the neck or the waist or the back, like a fashion version of what she has called “the frozen gesture.”
Also some not so good, such as skirts that resembled overly arty assemblages of chicken wire, metallic patchwork and chiffon, and some fan dresses — literally, dresses with fans stuck on the front and the back that mimicked Benglis’s fans, down to the dripping doodads.
Either way, the designs spoke to a bigger ambition. Anderson (and his overlords at Dior and its parent company, LVMH) know that couture is a closed room, open only to a very few. To change that, they have begun transforming the show space after the event into a gallery space, open to the public.
Inside: an exhibition featuring pieces from the collection along with pieces from the archive and pieces by the artist involved — in Benglis’s case, including pieces “exhibited in France for the first time,” according to a news release. Along with it, they have also made a documentary on Benglis that will be available to all.
In doing so, Dior is positioning itself as a shaper of taste far beyond the limits of fashion; a kind of cultural kingmaker. Little wonder another cultural empire-builder saw in the brand a kindred spirit.
As for the wedding dress, there was one: off the shoulder and ethereal, in white chiffon with handmade lace dripping in ferns and dandelion seeds like a whole garden borne on a breeze. Whether or not that dress was a sibling of the dress — whether it was Anderson’s own Easter egg — it sure was redolent of a love story.
