Walking the Fashion High Wire

PARIS — Out the women came, carrying one another on their backs. Up the women went, hoisted by each other’s hands. Over their bodies curved, all different sizes and strengths.

Maria Grazia Chiuri had hired the all-female acrobatic troupe Mimbre for her Dior show, and they stacked themselves into various innovative kinds of human pyramids — under the big top that the brand had raised in the gardens of the Rodin Museum — balancing on one another’s shoulders, reaching ever higher.

As an opening act for the couture, the metaphor was hard to miss.

Circus lends itself to many situations, the present one not excepted. There’s all sorts of talk about a clown in the White House. Brexiters are flying without a net. And there’s always something a little loop-the-loop about the couture: that part of style that showcases very expensive clothes for the very few. In any case, it’s hard to argue with the idea that the world is upside down. You might as well say it with fashion — especially the kind that isn’t expected to make sense hanging in a store for the everyday.

The problem, in Ms. Chiuri’s case, is that the theme led her down a creative wormhole to the past, and the kind of collection that paid homage to the circus of vintage postcard fame (also Dior heritage: remember Avedon’s famous 1955 photograph, “Dovima with Elephants?” Ms. Chiuri sure does). So there were crystal-spangled bloomers, and red and black polka-dot corset playsuits; harlequin ruffs and beaded bareback-rider dresses. It didn’t seem to have much to do with female power after all, except maybe for a troika of pleated Jean Harlow lamé gowns, the sort that used to make all viewers go weak at the knees and which should be coming soon to a red carpet near you.