John Galliano created a floral bouquet of bright colors at the Christian Dior autumn/winter couture show.

By SUZY MENKES
PARIS — Backstage at Christian Dior, a simple pair of glasses transformed the show Monday into an extraordinary 3-D screen vision of women as flowers. Petals lapped their hips, colors were a hothouse explosion of vivid shades and skirts were shaped like the parrot tulips that created a blooming mass of orange as the runway’s backdrop.
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“I’m having a floral moment,” said John Galliano, Dior’s designer, who came out in a straw country hat, while the models’ bulb-shaped hairdos were wrapped in colored cellophane like elegant, upturned bouquets.

On the high definition screen, Dior had everything the house could wish for as a stunning haute couture image: a romantic vision updated by technology so that the blooms seemed to be manipulated in cyberspace — gliding in front of a static audience. Here was a skirt clustered as if made with hydrangea heads; there, a dress with organic worms of fabric and a show-stopping petal of a pansy hand-painted on a ball gown.

Sitting in the audience, the view was slightly different: extraordinary, exceptional, but not quite the jolt of modernity that “Galliano the gardener” might have hoped for when he collaborated with Nick Knight, photographer and digital image maker. The designer said that he wanted to render real flower images contemporary. And the parade did turn the static loveliness of Irving Penn into the breathing, heaving sensuality of Georgia O’Keefe.

The collection was festive in its mix of colors like iris purple, hollyhock yellow and a nowhere-in-nature turquoise. Each outfit had contrasting accessories, from bright elbow-length gloves to shoes with wrought iron-effect heels. And this was a story about touch as well as sight — the deep-pile surface of a grass-green mohair coat or the iridescent shine of a hand-painted gown.

Not since the designer showed a Dior collection in the Bagatelle gardens of Paris in 1997 has the location seemed so perfect: the Rodin Museum, where a bank of pink roses (not to mention the classic statues) complemented the collection.

This was not one of Mr. Galliano’s seductive forays into history. The daywear was light and elegant, give or take the strong colors and a theme of flowers for a winter season. If the sweeping skirts and painterly colors recalled the much lamented couture collections of Christian Lacroix, they were perfectly controlled. And if you want the Dior drama reduced to wearable elegance, there was Marisa Berenson, sitting front-row, in a flower-patterned dress from the current ready-to-wear line.

Yet the 3-D version, which Dior may decide to post online, highlighted the reality of Paris haute couture in the 21st century. What keeps it alive is not the trickle of private customers, but the opportunity to express the vision and stir emotion for a vast public. If ever a collection were made to savor, to rerun each night on an iPad, perchance to dream, this Dior show was it.