JONATHAN Anderson, creative director of his eponymous label and now of Christian Dior, has collaborated with Amgueddfa Cymru on a major retrospective of Welsh artist Gwen John, marking the 150th anniversary of her birth.
Titled Gwen John: Strange Beauties, the exhibition opens at the National Museum Cardiff on Saturday, 7th February and will run until 28th June 2026, before touring internationally. As part of the collaboration, Anderson has designed five cornettes, the traditional starched white headdress worn by Dominican nuns and a recurring motif in John’s late works on paper. The cornettes, produced in different fabrics and colours, will be installed at the entrance to the exhibition.
JW Anderson x Gwen John
Anderson is a long-standing collector of Gwen John’s work and owns a rare watercolour depicting a nun on her deathbed, and you’ll notice his designs reference John’s sustained focus on the cornette as both form and subject. Born in Wales and based for much of her life in France, John converted to Catholicism in 1913, after which religious dress became a central element of her practice.
Anderson says: “Working in fashion you are always surrounded with the new, yet I’ve never got bored of Gwen John’s works – they grow on me and every time I see them in a different way.” He continues, “When it comes to Gwen John, I think there are certain painters that hit a period in history that changes the way in which we see the female sitter. A woman painting a woman is very different to a man painting a woman because there is an understanding of the female form, there’s an understanding of emotion that is very difficult to get. I think that is why she is one of the greatest painters in British history because she changes that dynamic.”
JW Anderson x Gwen John
JW Anderson x Gwen John
The cornette was widely worn from the late 18th century until the ’60s, when the habit was redesigned by Dior and Anderson’s latest intervention revisits the earlier form, drawing on John’s use of repetition, colour, and pattern.
Following the exhibition, the cornettes will be donated by JW Anderson to Amgueddfa Cymru, adding to the museum’s permanent holdings, sitting alongside the world’s largest public collection of works by Gwen John.
by Felicity Carter
Gwen John: Strange Beauties will run from 7 February – 28 June 2026 at the National Museum Cardiff, museum.wales/GwenJohn. A limited-edition exhibition poster featuring Anderson’s cornettes will be available through the National Museum Cardiff. The run is limited to 1,000 copies, priced at £65.