A designer’s debut is always nerve-wracking, even when you’re mega successful 41 year-old Northern Irish designer Jonathan Anderson. Even though he was one of many designers that jumped around from one fashion house to another during the Creative Director Musical Chairs from the last couple of years, Anderson’s Dior debut was definitely among the most highly anticipated.
Anderson joined the LVMH-owned label in March, and showed menswear in June. As Hypebae reports, on October 1 at Paris Fashion Week, the moment we’d all been waiting for had finally arrived. And never has the pressure been more intense than in 2025, when the global luxury industry is battling a sharp downturn. All eyes were on this show – not just to reinvent Dior, but to jolt fashion itself out of its slump.
“Daring to enter the house of Dior requires an empathy with its history, a willingness to decode its language, which is part of the collective imagination, and the resoluteness to put all of it in a box,” read the collection notes, setting the stage for what was to come.
Speaking of “setting the stage,” film-maker Luca Guadagnino designed the Tuileries Gardens runway set around an upside-down glass pyramid directly invoking the Louvre, that shimmering icon of modern Paris. As The Guardian reports, where the tip of the inverted pyramid touched the catwalk there was a shoebox in the house signature dove-grey. The message: yes, there are ghosts in the walls of Dior. Anderson’s job is to put them back in the box.
Anderson’s own response to the immense pressure to deliver the goods, was to “put the elephant in the middle of the room” with an opening film by the documentary maker Adam Curtis entitled, Do You Dare to Enter the House Of Dior. The five-minute Curtis fever-dream spliced mid-century couture dream-scenes with paparazzi chaos; horror movies with Marlene Dietrich; Diana, Princess of Wales, in couture with John Galliano looking absurd in a spacesuit. “Well, Dior is drama,” shrugged Anderson, backstage before the show.
Attended by a star-studded guest list, including new (and formerly LOEWE) brand ambassador Greta Lee, Mikey Madison, Charlize Theron, Willow Smith, Anya Taylor-Joy, Tracee Ellis-Ross, Little Simz, Rosalia, and not one, but two French first ladies – Brigitte Macron and Carla Bruni – the major calendar moment was everything we hoped it’d be.
Injecting Anderson’s playful design ethos into a house steeped in heritage, the result was a refreshing offering of outlandish silhouettes, moving textures and subtle nods to Dior’s history. Anderson went for the jugular by ripping up the New Look itself. The show began with a new Dior suit, telescoped cheekily upward from its elongated ladylike line so that skirts ended at the top of the thigh, where the hem of the original Bar jacket sat in 1947.
These knicker-skimmer skirts were in pink denim, or black leather, revealed by jackets that butterflied open at the waist. Hair hung loose, makeup was barely there. This was a Dior you could wear in Dalston. “Dior can be a bit sugary,” Anderson said. In the Dior story, “the woman is often sort of the princess”.
Pretty still sells, though, even if it doesn’t make headlines. So there were confectionary counter dresses that spoke to Christian Dior’s love of flowers, with embroidered forget-me-nots and trompe l’œil hydrangea ruffles, and a reading of Byron’s She Walks in Beauty. (“Dior can get a bit camp. I don’t mind that.”)
But there were also sinister beaked hats like black birds, and a scattering of the surreal-toned jokes that were Anderson’s calling card in his previous role at Loewe. A loafer branded with the “O” in Dior cut out to peekaboo the foot within, a sandal exploding with silk roses.
As stated in the brand’s press release, “Change is inevitable,” and change is what Anderson did. Recreating timeless dresses and co-ords with unusual details, oversized hats and fabric manipulation, the collection utilized unexpected combinations of fabrics, silhouettes and colorways.
You can take a look at the collection for yourself via the 10 livestream.
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Photo Credit: Loredana Sangiuliano / Shutterstock.com