Creative Director Natacha Ramsay-Levi tapped French sculptor Marion Verboom for Chloé’s AW20 stage, bringing a cache of her gilded, jesmonite columns to the runway inside Paris’s Grand Palais.

Verboom’s Tectonies are an assemblage of 10 casts inspired by Greco-Roman architecture, ordered to create columns like those found in ancient churches.

As the artist told Vogue Australia: ‘I was influenced, in particular, by Chryselephantine sculptures (the most famous one is the disappeared monumental Athena, which was originally installed into the Parthenon).’

The decorative golden columns took pride of place on an otherwise spartan stage, accompanied by a soundtrack of Marianne Faithfull reciting classical poetry as models walked the runway dressed in silk shirt dresses, wide-leg trousers and Argyle knitwear. Softer touches came from lace-collared shirts and paisley print linings.

An exhibition of Marion Verboom’s architectural Tectonies will be staged at Lisbon’s Calouste Gulbenkian Museum from 24 April to 7 September 2020.

Saint Laurent bathed models in moving lights for its AW20 show