Dior stages 'Grammar of Forms' exhibition around Anderson's second couture collection

French luxury house Christian Dior is presenting an exhibition titled 'Grammar of Forms', built around creative director Jonathan Anderson's second haute couture collection for the brand. The show explores how Anderson approached couture-making as a structured language, drawing on the codes, techniques and craft traditions of the Dior ateliers.

The collection was shaped by two references: the Dior archive and the work of American sculptor Lynda Benglis. According to the brand, Benglis is one of the most influential American artists of the past 60 years, known for sculptures often described as "frozen gestures" that appear to capture materials mid-motion. Her work spans materials from bronze, paper and wax to latex, foam and glitter.

Dior points to Christian Dior's own spring/summer 1947 haute couture collection as a precedent for this approach. That collection introduced a sculptural silhouette built on an internal structure of boning and padding, which became known as the 'New Look'. Over the following decade, the house named its lines after architectural or sculptural forms, including Zig-Zag, Tulip, A and H.

For the new collection, Anderson applied techniques including pleating, knotting, draping and embellishing to translate Benglis's organic, sculptural forms into garments. The brand says materials were engineered to resemble paper, metal or plaster, while embroidered surfaces were designed to mimic the artist's use of paint and glitter.

Each look in the collection was produced by hand in the Dior ateliers, a process the house describes as central to realising the collection's more experimental and structurally ambitious designs.