Alexa Chung, Bella Hadid, Winnie Harlow, and More Cover Their Faces in Couture at Dior’s Masked Ball

Alexa Chung, Bella Hadid, Winnie Harlow, and More Cover Their Faces in Couture at Dior’s Masked Ball

Dior has accustomed its fans to a lavish couture week bash, and on Monday night, the house surprised anew by transforming its show venue in the garden of the Rodin Museum into a Surrealist scene complete with a life-size chessboard out front. Just watching the Instagram moments take shape was another show in itself.

Inside, a masked crowd jostled toward the dance floor and angled for access to a packed VIP corner where Maria Grazia Chiuri, crutches to one side, greeted a succession of guests from her perch on a white leather sofa. “I’m really happy because it’s always a joy to be all together in this moment after the show,” she said, as Bella Hadid, Eva Herzigova, Sasha Pivovarova, Gabriel-Kane Day-Lewis, Pierre Niney, and Winnie Harlow mingled nearby. Taking in some of the headgear—house pieces by Stephen Jones and some seriously OTT creations, among them a golden swan, a house of cards, and a slew of diamanté face masks—the designer added, “Surrealism is really Paris to me. This party is a beautiful moment because people can really express themselves. I just wish I could dance!”

In the run-up to a performance by Willow Smith, Hadid offered her own take on what makes a Paris Fashion Week surreal: “What’s amazing to me is how much some of us have to do in the space of a week and somehow everyone manages to come through. The surreal thing for everyone [in fashion], I think, is that every time there are so many of us who panic and stress and worry, but, in the end, everything comes off beautiful and perfect.” Asked if she’d dance until dawn, Hadid demurred: “It’s hard to stay up late these days. I have to work in the morning!”