March 13, 2026 |
“Do you dare enter the house of Dior?” asked the opening line of the untitled short film, made by acclaimed documentary maker Adam Curtis, which opened Jonathan Anderson’s debut womenswear show.
Dare? Anderson is as fearless as they come, although at a preview of the collection, even he admitted that entering Dior’s hallowed couture atelier for the first time was “scary”.
He faced the fear and did it anyway. One by one, his models walked onto a set designed by the Challengers director Luca Guadagnino and introduced a radically new Dior era.
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Anderson’s job is to keep Dior relevant and what interests him about how we dress now is “this tension between dressing up and reality”. He’s good at both, able to serve what he calls “overt prettiness, the idea of the princess” in sheer lace gowns with winged, wired skirts and playful, bubble-hemmed mini skirts. “For me, it is the Dior fantasy part,” he said of these flights of feminine fancy. But he also sent out reality in the form of perfectly preppy polo tops and chinos, or a high-neck bow collar shirt worn with a pink denim mini skirt. Both vibes have a place in the big Dior world he’s creating.
Parallels with his menswear are all part of his strategy. “It’s going to keep compounding,” he said of the cross-pollination of ideas cascading through both the men’s and women’s collections. The men’s Bar jacket was mirrored for women, and paired with a short skirt that had dramatic folds at the back, based on the 1948 couture dress, Delft – the same piece that inspired those conceptual cargo pants in his men’s collection. Knit capes and jeans combos also echoed the men’s collection, as did the high-neck bow shirts, worn with mini skirts.
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The collection was rich with Dior references. The Bar jacket came in shrunken almost-childlike proportions and was worn with a bell-shaped mini skirt that bounced with every step, part of Anderson’s desire to create movement from static archive silhouettes. A dramatic, high, back-to-front lace collar came from a look designed by Saint Laurent during his tenure. And a swagged white gown embellished with hydrangeas at the hips was based on a 1953 design by Dior. The jutting, architectural hip line of several pieces echoed that of the 1952 Cigale dress, while the white petal and crystal gown that closed the show was a mini version of the 1949 Junon gown.
Reflecting on his Dior immersion so far, the designer said, “Every day, I feel like I learn something from all the people inside it because what they want to do is create something, which is fashion.” He served that with a capital F. Dior has a new look.
10 Magazine Issue 76 – CREATIVITY, CHANGE, FREEDOM – is out on newsstands March 18. Pre-order your copy here.
DIOR: NEW RADICAL
Photographer JOSEPH KADOW
Fashion Editor SOPHIA NEOPHITOU
Text CLAUDIA CROFT
Model EMMA WATERS at Milk Model Management
Hair HIROSHI MATSUSHITA
Make-up YUSAKU NAKAHARA at Walter Schupfer Management
Manicurist CECILIA ABBAS
Digital operator OLIVER LOOREN
Photographer’s assistant ANTON ANDALUS
Fashion assistants GEORGIA EDWARDS and RU JEAN
Casting SIX WOLVES
Production ZAC APOSTOLOU
Production assistant SONYA MAZURYK
Location Hôtel Plaza Athénée
Special thanks to JUSTINE KLAR and ILYANA HIANASY at Hôtel Plaza Athénée
Clothing and accessories throughout DIOR SS26
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