Dior, flowers, art fabrics and organic shapes for Jonathan Anderson's couture debut

Change of scene abruptly, and the three days of haute couture begin in Paris. The last banner of a world of privilege, made up of occasions that obey precise dress protocols, of abstract and self-sufficient rituals, of forms that repudiate the contemporary obsession with what is practical and comfortable, becomes of cogent relevance: because privilege in the current polarisation is more alive and evident than ever, and because the spectacularisation of everyday life and the culture of the permanent red carpet welcome the language of haute couture, which in the meantime is becoming more and more extreme, more and more distant from function to become only fantasy and representation.

"Ideas can generate profit, and it is on ideas that I work," says Jonathan Anderson, creative director of Dior. He is the one who opens, and also debuts: first time haute couture. "Until a year ago, I had no interest in couture," he continues. "What fascinates me is the knowledge behind things, made up of manual skills that, if not exercised, are destined to disappear.

As happens to modernists when confronted with the forms of haute couture - many of whose archetypes, in particular the hourglass or corolla lines, were defined precisely by Christian Dior - Anderson focuses on abstraction. Raf Simons - to whom much in fact refers - did it before him and right here. The result is that the relationship between dress and body becomes a dialogue between mutes.

The collection explores the tension between nature and artifice: a great classic of Mannerist thought, always a harbinger of exciting iconographic transpositions, of singular detours of form and matter. The starting point, now, is a bouquet of lilies of the valley received as a gift from John Galliano, which leads to a great flourishing of buds made of feathers, or organza. But there are also antique brocades and veil tulle, as well as undulating crinolines like Magdalene Odundo's sculptures, and then egg coats, dresses with the volume shifted to the belly, liquid patchworks of different materials and sensational bracelets with meteorite applications.

The glance, from a distance, is lyrical, exhilarating, but when the clothes get closer, one cannot help but notice that they lack movement, and that is the impression they leave. Anderson has the ability to bring opposing or even contradictory things together in a synthesis full of meaning. At Loewe, however, he managed to maintain a lightness of statement that is now missing, with the risk that the conceptuality turns into pretension. One appreciates, however, the design of transforming couture into a complete proposal, including bags, as well as the decision to open up the closed world to a wider public through an exhibition that, in the spaces of the fashion show, will place garments from the collection in dialogue with pieces from the Dior archive and creations by Magdalene Odundo.