Northern Irish designer ditches darker undercurrents for seductive vision of Monet’s waterlilies at opening show of Paris fashion week
In a dark news cycle, joy sells. With his second major womenswear show for Dior, the Northern Irish designer Jonathan Anderson put a pin in the soul-searching of his first season, and plunged gleefully for the springtime-in-Paris jugular. For the opening show of Paris fashion week, Dior offered a seductive vision of Monet’s waterlilies, walks in the Tuileries gardens, and the Eiffel Tower glittering in the sunshine.
Anderson, a keen art collector who moved to Paris for the Dior role last year, has been looking at Seurat’s romantic paintings of ordinary Parisians at leisure, as well as Monet. A promenade across the octagonal pond of the Tuileries was built as a catwalk, and the Sunday sailboats upgraded for the occasion into giant lily pads with vibrant blooms. Dollhouse-sized pairs of classic French green park chairs were sent out as whimsical invitations.
Under an obligingly blue sky, the buoyant mood of this show was very different from Anderson’s debut six months ago, where an Adam Curtis film splicing horror cinema with archive clips from the Dior archive opened proceedings, and faces were shadowed under darkly beaked Tricorn hats.
