From SoHo Studios to Paris Runways: Lynda Benglis Inspires Dior’s Jonathan Anderson

On a sweltering July afternoon, the echoes of Lynda Benglis’s radical 1960s sculptures seem to reverberate far beyond the cool halls of the Whitney. This season, her unconventional forms have found unexpected resonance on the haute couture runways of Paris, thanks to Jonathan Anderson, Dior’s creative director, who credits the New York artist as a guiding force behind his latest summer collection.

Anderson, who spent a whirlwind week in Manhattan in late June, was spotted studying Benglis’s poured latex and bronze works at the Met Breuer, drawn to her fearless experimentation. “There’s a sense of improvisation and New York energy in her work,” Anderson told Made in NYC while sketching at a Tribeca café. “It’s the same spirit I want to bring to Dior—restless, bold, unapologetically urban.”

Benglis, whose studio once anchored a corner of SoHo before luxury boutiques colonized the streets, long wrestled with the art world’s gendered hierarchies. Her sculptures—oozing, twisting, defiantly tactile—were a rebuke to the rigid minimalism of her era. Now, as Anderson translates those biomorphic shapes into silk drapes and metallic embroidery, her influence is finally stepping into the global spotlight, just as New York’s galleries gear up for a Benglis-focused group show in Chelsea later this month.

For New Yorkers, the cross-Atlantic homage feels especially timely. As the city’s creative class spills out onto summer rooftops and riverside parks, the boundary between art and fashion blurs. Recent nights have seen artists and designers mingling at Lower East Side openings, debating whether Benglis’s legacy is best honored on a plinth or a catwalk. “It’s not just about nostalgia,” says gallerist Maya Rosenthal. “It’s about how New York’s radical women keep shaping the culture—whether you’re uptown, downtown, or tuning in from Paris.”