After the Couture Show, Dior’s Surrealist Ball

PARIS — Maria Grazia Chiuri’s spring couture collection for Dior may have been an ode to surrealism, but it had nothing on the eye-popping masked ball that the brand staged eight hours later Monday in the show tent, nestled in the gardens of the Musée Rodin.

First, more than 800 guests made their way by candlelight across glittering grass to a giant chessboard, complete with robotic chess pieces that did their best to block the doors of the giant mirrored marquee.

Inside, the huge plaster casts of body parts that had been suspended from the ceiling for the show were still there, and Champagne accompanied edible fondant fancies shaped like Magritte-inspired apples or scarlet dice. All around were go-go girls in playing-card tutus, and a hostess worked the room with a lit candelabrum balanced on her head.

Performers covered in Spanx-like suits stroked each other’s hair in some sort of ersatz “Eyes Wide Shut” fantasy, the one sour note of the night. Not that the waiters in electric-blue suits covered in clouds (with painted faces to match) seemed to mind. They just kept on whipping up potent cocktails for delighted couture clients, all clad in the frothiest of ballgowns.

It was wild and wacky and utterly absurd (adjectives often used for fashion parties, even those without a surrealist theme).

Chiuri, on crutches after a fall in her home, could be seen smiling from the comfort of a velvet sedan, a masked clique of Arnaults (the family, through LVMH, owns Dior) hovering close by.

Elsewhere, the likes of Bella Hadid, Eva Herzigova and Monica Bellucci were in flying form, tearing up the checked dance floor until the wee hours. Others, though, were off to bed at midnight. With two more days of couture shows, and a hectic schedule to meet, even the brightest young things appeared conscious of a need to grab a few hours of beauty sleep before the morning light.