At the Sceners Gallery on the eastern edge of Paris, far from the Metropolitan Museum, where Kim Kardashian arrived at the Met Gala in a metallic orange breastplate with pert breasts and curvaceous hips, there are several examples of the art that inspired her.

There’s “Red Refrigerator,” a perfectly coiffed mannequin in a painted-on burgundy catsuit suspended in a mini fridge cabinet. There’s “Cover Story 4/4,” a full-body fiberglass version of Kardashian’s piece in lemon yellow fading to fleshy lilac and anchored by a gleaming bronze bar outlining the back silhouette. Then there’s “Kind of Blue,” a petite, nude figure with painted-on thigh-highs, orange stilettos, and blue eye shadow standing in front of an abstract painting in a wash of similar colors.

These pneumatic, eroticized replicas of the female body, reframed as decorative art, are the work of Allen Jones, a prominent figure in the British Pop Art scene who remains active today. He has been a source of intrigue in the fashion world—inspiring the likes of Thierry Mugler and Rick Owens—since well before Kardashian reached out to him for her 13th appearance at the annual Met Gala. The fiberglass component was re-edited from a cast dating back to 1967/68; the straps and leather skirt were executed by Patric Whitaker and Keir Malem of Whitaker Malem; and the brushstrokes were added directly by Jones.

Three weeks ago, Sceners debuted “Forms and Temptations,” an exhibition in collaboration with Almine Rech, a blue-chip gallery with locations in major cities around the world. Jones, who will turn 89 later this year, came for the vernissage from his home in England. He then traveled to New York and appeared in Vogue’s video documenting Kim’s fitting two days before the event, chuckling, “We will make this a unique moment.”

Open since 2024, Sceners is something of a hidden wonder. Near the Pere Lachaise Cemetery and above an Aldi supermarket, the skylit space was once a manufacturer for mechanical toys that co-founder Jonathan Haddad spent two years converting into a vast open plan with a feature wall that echoes the oxidized bronzes of Richard Serra.

Haddad, 28, previously ran a design studio in Antwerp before launching this gallery project with partner David Atlan. Their focus is the intersection of design and decorative art in the secondary market, and they don’t simply exhibit rarefied and coveted pieces, but present them with a collector-minded sensibility. What makes the display of Jones’s works so interesting is the furniture juxtapositions that offset his hyper-feminine work with more masculine shapes and statements.

Visitors pinball from one vignette to the next: a nature-covered cabinet by Carlo Bugatti painted with insects; an exceptional macassar ebony and bronze bed by Émile-Jacques Ruhlmann of prime Art Deco vintage; a paravent by Jean Dunand in black lacquer boasting graphic panels of gold leaf. Haddad said he loosely took cues from Gunter Sachs, the jet-set businessman-turned-photographer and filmmaker who was married to Brigitte Bardot for three years and a prominent collector of Jones’s art.

Previous Sceners shows have explored highbrow themes that bring together furniture designs from Rei Kawakubo, Owens, and Pierre Jeanneret. Meanwhile, Owens has referenced Jones’s chairs and tables in the past, integrating mannequins as wax versions of himself under glass tabletops and seats (although these were in collaboration with artist Douglas Jennings).

What does Haddad see when he looks at Jones’s figures? “I see [them] as something very much alive. When I close the lights here in the evening, I really believe I am seeing someone,” he replies. “I think Allen was looking at making something closer to reality, and in his paintings, he was looking at something really far from reality, so there is a contrast between them.”

Even though Jones overlaps with Pop ideas put forth by the likes of Warhol and Lichtenstein, his critics through the years would assert that he exaggerates the objectification of women. Haddad, who is also presenting one of Jones’s painterly screens—a vivid surrealist encounter between a man and woman—says that he views Jones less through any lens of vulgarity. “He was more inspired by Old Masters than provocative art,” he explained. “He was pushing the limits of what an artwork could be, but he was still very, very committed to his art.”

Which brings us back to Kim Kardashian, who has been entirely committed to herself as a total body of work with Nadia Lee Cohen as her creative director. For all of Monday night’s homages to John Singer Sargent, Georges Braque, Gustav Klimt, and Yves Klein, not to mention the Venus de Milo and the Winged Victory of Samothrace in the Louvre, Kardashian inhabiting this custom integration of Jones’s art will stand out for both embodying the brief and reintroducing his name to a broader audience. She shifted the focus to one of his sculptural bodies instead of her own, while basically offering herself to him—in this twilight of his career—as the most real-versus-unreal muse of all.