It wasn’t just the top-notch clothes that caught the eye at Dior’s spring 2026 menswear show in Paris last week. Eagle-eyed arty fashionistas spotted two delectable paintings by the underrated 18th-century French artist Jean Siméon Chardin hanging alongside the catwalk. In a room modelled on the Gemäldegalerie at the Kulturforum in Berlin, Jonathan Anderson, Dior’s new creative designer, bedecked models in outfits drawing on 18th- and 19th-century French menswear.
Chardin’s works—Basket of Wild Strawberries (1761) from the Louvre and A Vase of Flowers (around 1750) from the National Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh—provided an apt and elegant backdrop. Andrew Bonacina, an independent curator, says online that “at a time when art was often concerned with excess and spectacle, Chardin chose a different path: one of stillness, intimacy and reverence for the everyday”.
The Louvre acquired the marvellous strawberry work last year after 10,000 individuals donated more than €1.6m to a fundraising campaign to keep the work in France. Notably the luxury goods conglomerate LVMH contributed almost two-thirds to the Louvre’s purchase (around €15m). LVMH also owns Dior.
