PARIS (AP) — Jonathan Anderson arrived at Paris couture week with the fashion world still waiting to see the Dior wedding dress he made for Taylor Swift.
On Monday, on the first day, he tried to give it something else to look at.
Three days after Swift married NFL star Travis Kelce at New York’s Madison Square Garden, with both dressed by Dior, Anderson returned to the runway with a sculptural, heavily pleated haute couture collection inspired by American artist Lynda Benglis.
The commission was a coup for the LVMH-owned house and for Anderson, the 41-year-old Northern Irish designer appointed a year ago to overhaul all of Dior’s fashion lines.
For months, industry watchers had bet on American names, such as Ralph Lauren, or on Vivienne Westwood, whom Swift wears often.
The one dress the world wanted to see was the one Anderson would not show.
So on Monday he changed the subject — to art.
The collection tried to move the conversation from Swift’s hidden gown to the work of Benglis, known since the late 1960s for pouring latex onto gallery floors and letting metal fold and sag into shape.
Dior workrooms were treated as a version of her studio — a place where flat fabric is pressed, knotted and bent into three dimensions.
Benglis bends flat material into shape; so, in the end, does couture.
The clothes followed that idea. A skirt of silver-foiled petals moved with each step.
A strapless silver lamé gown was cinched with an oversized bow. Trousers and blouses were finished in tight hand-pressed pleats.
Dior’s signature Bar jacket, the nipped-waist shape the house has built on since 1947, was remade several ways: in fern-green tweed with a frayed fringe, in gray houndstooth folded into a giant bow, and once with loose chiffon threads left hanging at the hem.
Other looks were built entirely from embroidered silk flowers.
A wide fan of blue tulle was splayed across the front of one dress.
Handbags came in metallic pleats — four of them designed with Benglis herself.
France was in another heat wave, with temperatures above 30 Celsius (86 F).
Dior had sent fans with its invitations, and guests used them through the show in the gardens of the Rodin Museum.
The front row mixed pop stars with artists.
Singer Sabrina Carpenter and actor Josh O’Connor sat among guests including Priyanka Chopra, Nick Jonas, Naomi Watts, Rebecca Ferguson and Alexa Chung.
Despite the razzmatazz, Anderson’s wager is plain: that the world’s most storied fashion house can afford to be strange.
He is often compared to Matthieu Blazy, the new designer at rival Chanel, who made the wedding dress for singer Dua Lipa this month.
The season now carries a peculiar distinction: Its two biggest stories are dresses no one is allowed to see.
As couture tradition dictates, the show closed with a bride.
Anderson sent out a pale, strapless column gown under a long veil of hand-pleated chiffon, trimmed with feathered dandelions and embroidered cactus flowers.
It was the second wedding dress Anderson showcased this week — and the only one anyone could photograph.
