Jonathan Anderson shifts Dior buzz from Taylor Swift’s hidden wedding gown to sculptural couture

PARIS (AP) — Jonathan Anderson arrived at Paris couture week with the fashion world still waiting to see the Dior wedding dress he made for Taylor Swift.

On Monday, on the first day, he tried to give it something else to look at.

Three days after Swift married NFL star Travis Kelce at New York’s Madison Square Garden, with both dressed by Dior, Anderson returned to the runway with a sculptural, heavily pleated haute couture collection inspired by American artist Lynda Benglis.

The commission was a coup for the LVMH-owned house and for Anderson, the 41-year-old Northern Irish designer appointed a year ago to overhaul all of Dior’s fashion lines.

For months, industry watchers had bet on American names, such as Ralph Lauren, or on Vivienne Westwood, whom Swift wears often.

The one dress the world wanted to see was the one Anderson would not show.

So on Monday he changed the subject — to art.

The collection tried to move the conversation from Swift’s hidden gown to the work of Benglis, known since the late 1960s for pouring latex onto gallery floors and letting metal fold and sag into shape.

Dior workrooms were treated as a version of her studio — a place where flat fabric is pressed, knotted and bent into three dimensions.

Benglis bends flat material into shape; so, in the end, does couture.

The clothes followed that idea. A skirt of silver-foiled petals moved with each step.

A strapless silver lamé gown was cinched with an oversized bow. Trousers and blouses were finished in tight hand-pressed pleats.

Dior’s signature Bar jacket, the nipped-waist shape the house has built on since 1947, was remade several ways: in fern-green tweed with a frayed fringe, in gray houndstooth folded into a giant bow, and once with loose chiffon threads left hanging at the hem.

Other looks were built entirely from embroidered silk flowers.

A wide fan of blue tulle was splayed across the front of one dress.

Handbags came in metallic pleats — four of them designed with Benglis herself.

France was in another heat wave, with temperatures above 30 Celsius (86 F).

Dior had sent fans with its invitations, and guests used them through the show in the gardens of the Rodin Museum.

The front row mixed pop stars with artists.

Singer Sabrina Carpenter and actor Josh O’Connor sat among guests including Priyanka Chopra, Nick Jonas, Naomi Watts, Rebecca Ferguson and Alexa Chung.

Despite the razzmatazz, Anderson's wager is plain: that the world’s most storied fashion house can afford to be strange.

He is often compared to Matthieu Blazy, the new designer at rival Chanel, who made the wedding dress for singer Dua Lipa this month.

The season now carries a peculiar distinction: Its two biggest stories are dresses no one is allowed to see.

As couture tradition dictates, the show closed with a bride.

Anderson sent out a pale, strapless column gown under a long veil of hand-pleated chiffon, trimmed with feathered dandelions and embroidered cactus flowers.

It was the second wedding dress Anderson showcased this week — and the only one anyone could photograph.

Models wear creations as part of the Christian Dior Haute Couture Fall/Winter 2026-2027 Women's collection presented in Paris, Monday, July 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Emma Da Silva)

A model wears a creation as part of the Christian Dior Haute Couture Fall/Winter 2026-2027 Women's collection presented in Paris, Monday, July 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Emma Da Silva)

A model wears a creation as part of the Christian Dior Haute Couture Fall/Winter 2026-2027 Women's collection presented in Paris, Monday, July 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Emma Da Silva)

A model wears a creation as part of the Christian Dior Haute Couture Fall/Winter 2026-2027 Women's collection presented in Paris, Monday, July 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Emma Da Silva)

A model wears a creation as part of the Christian Dior Haute Couture Fall/Winter 2026-2027 Women's collection presented in Paris, Monday, July 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Emma Da Silva)

PARIS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jul 8, 2026--

RAISE —SambaNova today announced it has completed the first close of $1 billion in strategic financing as part of a Series F round, valuing the company at $11 billion post money. This latest financing round was led by General Atlantic, a leading global investor, with significant investment from Seligman Ventures, T. Rowe Price Associates, Inc., and Capital Group. New and existing investors include A&E Investment, Assam Ventures, Battery Ventures, funds and accounts managed by BlackRock, Cambium Capital, Intel Capital, Kabila Capital, QFO Capital, Qatar Investment Authority (QIA), Vista Equity Partners and Volantis.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260708184792/en/

“SambaNova’s platform is differentiated, built for a market where inference has become foundational to enterprise and industry transformation,” said Martín Escobari, Co-President and Head of Global Growth Equity at General Atlantic. “Rodrigo and the team are driving deep technical innovation to achieve growing commercial momentum while demand for inference is accelerating well ahead of supply. We are pleased to lead this round to support SambaNova in shaping the next generation of AI infrastructure.”

“We’re excited to partner with Rodrigo and the SambaNova team as they build a category-defining AI infrastructure platform at a moment when enterprise AI is shifting from training to production deployment,” said Umesh Padval, Managing Partner at Seligman Ventures and Board Observer at SambaNova. “As AI moves into production, lowering cost per token while maintaining performance and efficiency will be critical for enterprise adoption. SambaNova’s purpose-built RDU architecture is uniquely positioned to address that challenge at scale.”

The influx of capital comes at a time of accelerating momentum for SambaNova. In recent months, the company has announced new leadership to support scale, expanded its global customer footprint, advanced its collaboration with Intel on heterogeneous inference, and continued to push the market toward premium inference architectures optimized for agentic AI and enterprise deployment. Earlier this year, SambaNova also unveiled its SN50 chip and announced a $350 million-plus raise alongside a strategic collaboration with Intel.

SambaNova will use the proceeds to expand capacity, accelerate product innovation, and scale deployments for enterprises, neo-clouds, sovereign AI customers, and service providers worldwide. It will grow customer programs and continue investing across chips, systems, software, and full-stack AI infrastructure.

JPMorganChase to Deploy SambaNova Systems as Inference Partner

SambaNova also announced that JPMorganChase has selected the company as an inference infrastructure partner, deploying its SN40 and SN50 systems to power secure, on-prem AI inference for the firm.

“At JPMorganChase, AI infrastructure has to meet a very high bar for performance, control and reliability,” said Darrin Alves, CIO, Infrastructure Platforms, JPMorganChase. “We’re excited to deploy SambaNova’s RDU architecture and looking forward to testing its speed and security for on-prem inference in our demanding enterprise AI workloads.”

About SambaNova

SambaNova is a leader in next-generation AI infrastructure, providing a full-stack platform that powers premium inference for enterprises, neo-clouds, AI labs, service providers, and sovereign AI initiatives worldwide. Founded in 2017 and headquartered in San Jose, California, SambaNova delivers chips, systems, and cloud services that enable customers to deploy state-of-the-art models with superior performance, lower total cost of ownership, and rapid time to value.

“SambaNova’s $11 billion valuation highlights the central role that fast inference now plays in the enterprise AI stack." Rodrigo Liang, co-founder and CEO of SambaNova.