Dior presents the “Grammar of Forms” Exhibition

From 27 January, the Musée Rodin show location will host “Grammar of Forms”, a week-long presentation that places a selection of Jonathan Anderson’s Haute Couture designs in dialogue with iconic creations by Christian Dior and ceramic sculptures by Magdalene Odundo.

Grammar of Forms presents Jonathan Anderson’s debut Haute Couture collection for the house of Dior.

It marks a new era and a new language built on an inheritance of codes and time-steeped crafttraditions. While rooted in history, haute couture must evolve to reflect the urgency of the moment— for Anderson, it is a laboratory where new ideas and expressions are born.

This exhibition bringstogether selected looks from his collection and places them in dialogue with pieces by Christian Dior and ceramic sculptures by Magdalene Odundo, tracing a shared attention to formal innovation,craftsmanship and new definitions of beauty across art forms.

Iconic Dior looks embody some of couture’s foundational tools: proportion, structure, materialinvention. Architectural Dior silhouettes, each one a quiet revolution, exemplify how garments candefine a new attitude. Anderson returns to these codes and reframes them as provocations, asking howfamiliar silhouettes can find a new radicality through new materials and contexts, and how traditioncan be tailored to fit the present.

Vessels by Odundo offer a pivotal lens for Anderson’s collection, one that reframes couture throughthe poetics of sculpture. Odundo creates hand-built forms that echo the rhythms of the humanbody while recalling ancient traditions of vessel-making. Her sculptures are at once intimate andmonumental and reveal how form is achieved through a deep knowledge of material. Like Christian Dior himself, Anderson often turns to visual artists as collaborators or for inspiration. Drawing onthe lessons of Odundo’s work, Anderson explores exaggerated tensions in proportion and silhouette, while the exquisite refinement of Odundo’s surfaces is echoed in the technical mastery of handmade textiles and intricate embroideries.

These objects, whether in cloth or clay, celebrate the incalculable value of time and hold within thema dedication to protecting the fragile chains of human knowledge that are strengthened with eachnew creative act.

Scenography © Adrien Dirand @adriendirand

Courtesy of Dior