Jonathan Anderson gave his second Dior couture over to a sculptor. Lynda Benglis works in knots and pours, and the collection took her method as its own.
The show sat inside the Musee Rodin on the afternoon of 6 July. A canopy of flowers hung low over the runway. Anderson took charge of Dior in April 2025, and this was his fifth collection for the house and his second in haute couture. The room read as a garden held under a ceiling of petals.
Benglis made her name pouring latex and pigmented foam onto floors and walls in the late 1960s. Flat material became mass. A two-dimensional surface turned into something with weight and shadow. Anderson set couture the same task. Cloth begins flat on the table and leaves it carrying volume.
Knot and pour
The pleat work carried the argument. A grey shawl, a bronze-and-gold top and a silver gown each gathered at one point and pulled into an off-kilter bow. The knot held the fabric mid-motion. Plisse ran through the collection in fine, close folds that caught the light and moved with the body.
Fringe covered whole panels. Sparkling tweeds sat next to crinkled and worked cloth. Hand-sculpted flowers bloomed off shoulders and hips as raised appliqué. The Bar jacket returned with fringed trim and sheer panelling, its familiar line loosened.
India and France
The craft came from more than one place. Anderson worked with ateliers in France and in India, and the collection named that openly. Antique fragments of chintz, drawn from his research into eighteenth-century Indian textile work, covered the Petit Diner and the mini Lady Dior.
Benglis has kept a long relationship with Ahmedabad, in Gujarat. Her Peacock series came out of that time in the 1970s, bright with floral and beaded work. Two looks, the twenty-fourth and the thirtieth, carried a large embellished fan. It read almost as a direct copy of her Zanzidae, from the Peacock series, made in 1979.
The collection treats a dress as a sculpture that has agreed to be worn.
The Splendid EditThe bags
Benglis co-designed four bags for the show. A Dior Cigale arrived in metallic plisse, its shell folded like the pleats on the gowns. A new Dior Bow took the knot from the clothes and set it in leather. Pleated hats sat low, crumpled and worked like the fabric beneath them.
Dior Haute Couture Fall/Winter 2026, Musee Rodin. Courtesy of Dior
The front row filled with names, Sabrina Carpenter and Priyanka Chopra Jonas among them. The clothes held their own against the attention. Anderson has now shown couture at Dior twice, and both times he has pointed away from himself, toward an artist and a workroom. The method is turning into the signature.