In the courtyard of a 12th-century hunting lodge in Paris was hidden a gleaming new marquee, wallpapered all over with sheet music for a violin sonata. In the centre of the marquee was The Only Place You Came to Me Was in My Sleep, a 2017 life-size bronze sculpture of a small bird by Tracey Emin. Around the bird, which gazed down on the room from a 13ft pole, were seated an audience including the actors Jeff Goldblum, Rob Lowe and Ayo Edebiri, each clutching the heavy golden Tudor love rings that were their invitations to the Loewe fashion show, in preparation for which this scene had been created.

Of all the many unexpected elements of the world designer Jonathan Anderson has built at Loewe, the strangest part of all is that this esoteric universe is a smash hit. Loewe, a venerable Spanish brand that had previously enjoyed a respectable 150 years making elegant handbags for Madrid’s ladies who lunch, has in Anderson’s era become the fastest-growing house in the LVMH luxury stable.

This has been achieved not by chasing commercial success, but by leftfield choices such as the casting of 89-year-old Dame Maggie Smith – news of whose death came hours after this latest show – as a billboard model. The central joke of a recent ad campaign was that no one knows how to pronounce Loewe (Lo-weh-vay). Even the name of its It bag – the Puzzle – leans into confusion.

First on to the catwalk were a series of sheer georgette dresses, given antebellum grandeur with hoops of fine wire supporting the skirts. Fine chains were sewn into the dress hems, lending an undulating gravity, so that the dresses bobbed and floated like jellyfish.

They were worn with mirrored sunglasses, and shoes with extra-long toes. Anderson, a soft-spoken, jeans-wearing 40-year-old who converses with an intense-PhD-student energy that has little in common with any popular tropes of the fashion designer personality, said after the show that clown-length brogues, boat shoes and loafers were “about poise, about the gesture of stepping forward”. Minidresses so short that they showed models’ bottoms were “about sex, but also not about sex”, Anderson non-explained. “I’m interested in elongation, in how to push the body upward.”

Last week, a previously unknown piece of music by Mozart was discovered in a German library. A portrait of Mozart strolled down this catwalk on a T-shirt, worn with jeans and trainers like a piece of modern concert merch. Another T-shirt was painted with Van Gogh’s Sunflowers, another with a portrait of Bach.

“I like the idea that Mozart is still dropping music, like a pin-up rock star,” said Anderson. “Great artists are part of high culture and low culture at the same time. When I’m on my way to work here in Paris, there are all these stalls along the Seine selling posters of the paintings in the Louvre. A painting like Van Gogh’s Sunflowers must mean something to us, for it to be so magnetic for everyone.”

The rings sent out as invitations, Anderson said, were hand engraved, and made in silver. “I wanted them to be mementoes of today. There’s no point just showing clothing for clothing’s sake.”