Oxford + Park

Christian Dior creative director Raf Simons has a "go big or go home" mentality when it comes to his elaborate sets for the label. Known for utilizing flowers as decor, last season's couture show featured walls covered in more than 150,000 white orchids. However, this season the designer went for a bit more structure. Drawing inspiration from "the druggie aspect of the ’60s and ’70s with the early salon style of the ’50s," Simons constructed a space-age set with Pepto-Bismol-pink plush carpeting and wall-to-wall mirrors.

It's no secret that Raf Simons loves flowers. For his debut couture collection at Dior in 2012, the designer commissioned wall installations that contained more than a million flowers, including roses, peonies and dahlias, that took workers four days to assemble. Then at the spring 2014 show, models walked the runway underneath an exotic hanging garden at the Musée Rodin.

This week the museum was once again transformed for Dior's fall couture collection, where attendees were treated to walls lined with 150,000 white orchids. The designer teamed up with Mark Colle, an Antwerp-based florist and longtime collaborator of Simons, to create the enchanting set.

"The idea was to create transparency," Colle said. "Something very light. The use of phalaenopsis orchids was perfect in this particular setting—they have a feminine feel yet there is something alien and futuristic about them (which is also the reason why I enjoy working with them so much). Rather then having them hanging from the walls in a garden type of way, I thought it would be more interesting to have them go many different directions, as if they were an army of white spiders spreading out over the mirrored walls."

Of course, Simons isn't alone in his affinity for flora. Christian Dior himself was an avid gardener and horticulturist, with the rose being his favorite flower. At his very first couture show in 1947, Dior decorated the show space with blue delphiniums, pink sweet peas and white lily of the valley. So not only are Simons' grand sets immaculate and beautiful, but they also serve as a nice homage to the designer and the house of Dior.

When September rolls around, you might want to think twice before retiring your bright summer wardrobe. Designers such as Alexander Wang, Donna Karan, Ralph Lauren and now Raf Simons have shunned a muted palette in favor of neon colors, ranging from electric blue to hot pink to acid yellow, for fall.

In his show notes, Simons explained that the tailored suit pieces and vibrant colors in the collection were about women in the city and their sense of sartorial freedom.

“I wanted to present women with freedom and possibilities in the way they dress, too," he said.

Another nod to women-on-the-go were the sporty hybrids. Coats and dresses were adorned with large lace-up embellishments, while shoes were a blend of high heel meets track shoe — a perfect choice for Simons' powerful Dior woman to dash from board meeting to board meeting.

"[Raf Simons'] girl loves makeup"—specifically eye makeup that manifest itself as Spring's "techno-butterflies," as Pat McGrath tells it, replete with squared-off splashes of bright creams topped with shadows that were dragged across lids and accessorized with Swarovski crystals, lots of them.

"There were 55 girls. We started beading at 8:30 in the morning [for a 2:30 show]," she explained of the individual hand designs that were assigned to each model. "Once you've done that, you don't really need anything else."