Last season creative director Raf Simons relocated Dior’s spring show to Louis Vuitton’s former Musée du Louvre home with the help of production kings Bureau Betak, and for A/W they’ve returned with a new, purpose-built glass box.
Inside the super tent’s graphic interiors, Simons’ tonally picked up where his January haute couture show left off - the pastel pink (a signature house hue) carpet replaced by buffed flooring for ready-to-wear. Thick, black pillars created a jumbled blocky effect, connecting the co-ordinating pink ceiling with the smooth ground, as white benches lay in swirling configurations like fallen friends. Huge glass windows offered a clear vista of the location’s money-can’t-buy sandstone façade, a stone’s throw from the Tuileries.
’I wanted the collection to deal with nature and femininity in a different way,’ explained Simons. ’Away from the garden and the flower, to something more liberated, darker and more sexual.’ Winter’s set reinforced this message with its sweet colouring and bold, graphic composition. And just like Simons’ abstracted animal print, it roared quietly, just as things should at Dior.