With Dior, artist Alex Chinneck has transformed the storefront into something dreamlike. Conceived for House of Dior New York on 57th Street and House of Dior Beverly Hills on Rodeo Drive, his new window displays twist the familiar symbols of each city into surreal interventions that feel suspended somewhere between architecture, theater, and couture. Yellow taxis knot themselves into impossible gestures. Street lamps arch like ribbons. Clocks, traffic lights, and vintage cars appear gathered into sculptural bouquets, carrying the wit and elegance that have come to define Chinneck’s practice.
The installations arrive as celebrations of Dior’s longstanding relationship with the United States and the first anniversary of both flagship locations. Drawing inspiration from Christian Dior’s enduring dialogue with art, the displays reinterpret urban infrastructure through the language of fashion, echoing drapery, bows, and the floral motifs woven throughout the House’s history.
Known for reimagining buildings, streetscapes, and public architecture with poetic illusion, Chinneck approaches sculpture with a rare balance of technical precision and emotional immediacy. His works often appear impossible at first glance, yet they carry a tenderness that invites viewers into the fantasy rather than holding them at a distance.
Whitewall spoke with the artist about translating Dior’s visual codes into hypnotic form, the contrasting energies of New York and Los Angeles, and why he continues to see the built environment as something fluid and alive.
HOUSE OF DIOR NEW YORK, © GUILLAUME BARRY, Courtesy of DIOR.
WHITEWALL: Your work transforms ordinary architecture and urban objects into moments of disbelief. When approaching this collaboration with Dior, how did you think about storytelling differently within the context of a fashion house?
ALEX CHINNECK: We focused on the context of each House of Dior—taking the urban ingredients of Manhattan and those of Beverly Hills to produce interventions that are bespoke to each city. The designs evolved over fifteen months with the architecture of each space, the integration of dressed mannequins and elements of the Dior identity always in mind. It was a highly collaborative and unified design process with the Dior team.
WW: The New York installations seem to channel the rhythm and compression of Manhattan itself—objects tangled, gathered, and bent into impossible forms. How did the energy of New York specifically shape the emotional tone and visual language of these works?
AC: House of Dior New York features nine sculptures with big personalities. This is exactly how I interpret Manhattan—many bold characters in one incredible place. The city is a successful tangle of ambitious elements and this set of sculptures seeks to be the same—a curated but dynamic intertwining of objects and ideas that resonate with New York and Dior.
“The city is a successful tangle of ambitious elements and this set of sculptures seeks to be the same…”
Alex Chinneck
WW: In Beverly Hills, the atmosphere feels different—more cinematic, sunlit, and fluid. How did Los Angeles and Rodeo Drive influence the sculptural vocabulary of the Dior displays there, particularly through the spirals and draped forms?
AC: Our focus was Rodeo Drive and the nostalgic aesthetics that come with it. The family of sculptures in Beverly Hills are calmer and perhaps slicker in their sculptural fluidity. Naturally, when responding to LA, the work assumes a Hollywood feel and I love how this tied in with the cars and lamps of the Dior Cruise show.
Dior Heritage Through Illusion
HOUSE OF DIOR BEVERLY HILLS, © GUILLAUME BARRY, Courtesy of DIOR.
WW: Christian Dior famously believed in the dialogue between fashion and art. While developing these installations, were there particular aspects of Dior’s heritage—couture construction, silhouettes, archival imagery, or even the theatricality of the runway—that entered your creative process in unexpected ways?
AC: Dior has a collection of visual identities that we absolutely took inspiration from. The bow is synonymous with Dior and the dressing of the Miss Dior bottle—House of Dior New York and House of Dior Beverly Hills therefore feature cast metal street lanterns tied into bows, arching over Dior dresses.
The Lily of the valley was Christian Dior’s favourite flower and lucky charm—it is a classic motif that runs through the Dior archive. Our 5-metre tall bouquet of cast metal street lanterns, bound together with a street sign, imitates this bunched and drooping form.
WW: Your sculptures often sit between illusion and engineering, where the impossible somehow appears physically believable. What does your design process actually look like when translating an idea from sketch to large-scale installation, especially within the constraints of a luxury storefront?
AC: In many ways I design artworks and we take complex technical paths to pull off seemingly effortless illusions. A small percentage of the process is creative daydreaming and idea conception while there is a large amount of digital modelling, spatial design, fabrication design, engineering, installation design, logistics considerations and so on. I worked very closely with the Dior project management teams, who were fantastic.
“In many ways I design artworks and we take complex technical paths to pull off seemingly effortless illusions.”
Alex Chinneck
WW: There’s a sense of humor in your work, but also an undercurrent of precision and technical rigor. How do you balance whimsy with craftsmanship so that the work never slips into spectacle alone?
AC: With quality of execution, obsessive attention to detail, robust materiality, contextually responsive designs and a foundational knowledge of the history of sculpture. My work is a delicate and deliberate balance of theatricality, playfulness and physical feats on the one hand with beauty, history, craft and contextual responsiveness on the other.
Reimagining the Built World
HOUSE OF DIOR NEW YORK, © GUILLAUME BARRY, Courtesy of DIOR.
HOUSE OF DIOR NEW YORK, © GUILLAUME BARRY, Courtesy of DIOR.
WW: Across your broader practice, you’ve manipulated everything from buildings to public infrastructure into poetic interventions. Looking back on your artistic journey, what first compelled you to see the built environment not as something fixed, but as something elastic and emotionally charged?
AC: I suppose I like to challenge the notion of rigidity though sculpture—the work is a positive rejection of restriction.
“The work is a positive rejection of restriction.”
Alex Chinneck
I see sculpture as the reconfiguration of the world around us so it makes sense to me that I work with the materials, objects and structures that surround and contain us everyday. There’s also a strong thread of surrealism that runs through my work which is the fantastical disruption of the familiar—presenting these everyday things in more extraordinary ways.
WW: The Dior windows feel like fleeting urban fantasies encountered in passing—moments that interrupt someone’s day with surprise. As you look ahead, are there new materials, scales, cities, or ideas you’re eager to distort, unravel, or reinvent next within your evolving practice?
AC: As an ambitious sculptor, it’s impossible to not be inspired by and drawn to the monumentalism of James Turrell’s Roden Crater and Michael Heizer’s City. The notion of making a colossal yet contextually sensitive intervention into a landscape is increasingly of interest.
HOUSE OF DIOR NEW YORK, © GUILLAUME BARRY, Courtesy of DIOR.
HOUSE OF DIOR BEVERLY HILLS, © GUILLAUME BARRY, Courtesy of DIOR.
