On an unseasonably warm March day earlier this year in the Jardin des Tuileries, fake water lilies floated in the park’s Bassin Octogonal, either side of a stark white catwalk. It is not exactly unusual to see a flower at a Dior show – for the house’s founder, an amateur horticulturalist who envisaged his femmes as fleurs, roses, lily of the valley and peonies reigned supreme. Yet these are more widely culturally redolent – Claude Monet much? Well, the show was staged a stone’s throw from the Musée de l’Orangerie, where a vast panorama of those nymphéas, as they say in France, pull in the crowds. Anderson was likewise inspired by the idea of parks and promenades in the 19th century. “Where you would go to be seen,” he said. “Dressing up.” Within the collection, the pond plants leapt up to lobes and shoulders as earrings and brooches, complete with waxy water droplets. And, as seen here, they also blossom on the mis-matching Nymphéas (see what he did there?) heeled sandals – and they also determine its form, a silk sole lily-pad-shaped. That, and the asymmetrically placed flowers (in hand-painted and lacquered metal with crystals), are redolent of earlier readymade objects-as-shoes of Anderson’s collections past (glossy red anthuriums? Cracked eggs?). Happily, they are both precious and a little bit amphibian with their split tabi toes. Call it a frog march.
Dior Nymphéas Heeled Sandals are available here
