Jean Siméon Chardin (1699–1779) was a French painter best known for his quiet, intimate still lifes and domestic scenes. Jonathan Anderson, freshly appointed at Dior is a fan. While Chardin lived during the Rococo period, he chose a more subdued and contemplative approach, focusing on everyday life and humble subjects with extraordinary sensitivity and technical skill.

Dior’s Spring 2026 menswear show in Paris last week offered more than just impeccably tailored fashion. Sharp-eyed VIPs, and media were treated to a rare visual bonus: two exquisite paintings by the often-overlooked 18th-century French artist Chardin, displayed beside the runway and directly in the background of models.

The show took place in a space inspired by Berlin’s Gemäldegalerie at the Kulturforum, where Dior’s new creative director, Jonathan Anderson, dressed models in looks that nodded to French menswear of the 18th and 19th centuries.

The Chardin paintings, Basket of Wild Strawberries (1761), on loan from the Louvre, and A Vase of Flowers (circa 1750), from the National Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh, offered a fittingly refined counterpoint to the collection. As independent curator Andrew Bonacina, friends of Jonathan Anderson, noted online, “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.”

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