Another Day, Another Dior Debut for Jonathan Anderson

PARIS — Deep-pocketed fashion wizardry transformed Dior’s showspace at the Musée Rodin from the velvet-curtained solemnity of last week’s menswear show to Monday’s upside down: a meadow of greensward and blossoming cyclamen on the ceiling, a floor of chrome parquet. Two versions of durability: one representing nature, the other manmade ingenuity. And you could just about see that as the core of Jonathan Anderson’s first haute couture collection for the house that he now has complete creative dominance over. We’ve seen his menswear and womenswear, and now, finally, the premiere of his vision for the pinnacle of the pyramid. Is it too obvious to say he saved the best for last?

Anderson is a natural contrarian. His default stance is a kind of ambiguity bordering on surrealism, which was the engine of his triumph at Loewe, where he drained every drop of discombobulating beauty from collection after collection. His canvas at Dior is exponentially bigger. He’s already said he’s giving himself years to explore it. Meanwhile, he claims he is in awe of the atelier’s capabilities, and he wants to communicate that to the world. For the rest of the week, the Musée Rodin will host a free exhibition illuminating the craftsmanship of a couture collection, hopefully with some images culled from the backstage wall of utterly beautiful watercolours of the collection. Anderson only recently discovered that he has five illustrators at his disposal. He charged them with coming up with their own visual language to describe the collection. Now every couture dress will be accompanied by one of those small perfect paintings when it is sold.

Christian Dior Haute Couture Spring/Summer 2026 (Launchmetrics.com/Spotlight)

For all of that, there’s something about the history of couture at this particular house which inculcates a little more anticipation, even urgency, than the ready-to-wear. The shadow of the founding father hangs heavy. This is where your claim to the crown stands or falls. Which is maybe why Anderson’s couture debut was a much clearer statement than his first two outings for the brand. He claimed the narrative was “how you learn from nature.” None of last week’s confusing Poiret cross-fertilisation here, just a few Bar silhouettes (they are, after all, the leitmotif of the house) and a sleeve he said he’d lifted from ur-couturier Charles Worth. And there were flowers everywhere, echoes of Christian Dior’s own femmes fleurs. Sometimes, they were dresses blooming with crushed blossoms, other times they were as delicate as hand-painted feathers, hand-cut to look like pressed flowers. A draped knit dress of crow-black godets reminded me of deadly datura blooms. Amelia Gray walked in a long, classically draped gown offset with red nasturtiums under a parasol of a giant silk gunnera leaf mounted on a brass stem. This echoed something John Galliano, front row centre at Monday’s show, might have shown in his days of Dior pomp.

Anderson claimed he was truly shocked by the depth of online negativity stirred up by his men’s show last week. It’s nonsense to imagine him inserting some riposte into this one, and yet he was clearly at peace here with the idea of offering something that celebrated unambiguous prettiness. “Very feminine, for me,” he said drolly as he pointed out a pair of jacket dresses composed of layers of netting with flaring ballerina peplums during a pre-show visit. One gown featured butterfly wings enlarged 1000 times and rendered in veils of organza. A motif he found from 1957 inspired a beaded flapper dress that dissolved into a torrent of fringes that fell to midcalf. And there was even a proper couture bride, swathed in flower-embroidered gazar with a train of petals. Anderson liked its classicism.

It was the clincher of a collection which made the most of asymmetrical draping. Which also made the occasional outbreak of linear rigour all the more dramatic: a high-waisted black python coat, a long black Bar in shiny plongé leather, a couple of pant suits, one black, the other white, the jackets subtly Bar, draping over the hips and the fluid trousers.

As mentioned, Anderson has talked about taking his time with Dior. The reaction to his men’s show suggested he moved too fast in imposing his own idiosyncrasies, and yet his couture show was quietly loaded with the personal elements that make him such a fascinating designer. The magpie sensibility, for one, that brings a Wunderkammer quality to his work. It was clearest in the accessories. 18^th century miniatures were reconfigured as pearl-framed brooches. Meteorite fragments made casts for rings and bracelets. They were reminders of the necklaces he created from ancient Egyptian beads for his own collection. Here, there were one-off bags conjured up from 18^th century French fabrics, embroidered and patchworked to give them a contemporary flair. Anderson found the artisan who could extend to the ground the silver chains that Victorian purses were spun from. His nose for an arcane artisan is non pareil. Hence, a wondrous weasel, also spun from silver chain, which was inspired by a Bronzino portrait of a gentlewoman with her pet. Its mouth gaped wide in a carnivorous laugh.

He has said that his dream career would be that of the ceramic artist Magdelene Odundo. He has shown her work in exhibitions he has curated and she starred in a JWA campaign. He opened his first couture collection with three dresses modelled on a classic Odundo vase shape, silk georgette draped in tiny ruched lines to create a cloud effect. Startlingly simple in effect, but technically complex in realization. Everything about these three looks felt like essential Anderson: the inspiration, the graphism, the odd allure. Odundo was seated in the front row carrying one of the tasselled bags from Anderson’s first ready-to-wear collection. That bag was created by the textile artist Sheila Hicks, who, now in her early 90s, is what the Japanese would call a National Living Treasure. She was seated directly opposite Odundo and she was getting a huge amount of pleasure from photographing her handiwork across the aisle. It was the kind of charming moment we will only ever encounter at a Jonathan Anderson show. And we can only imagine — and hope — there will be many more such as he settles into his tenure at Dior. There’s barely a month until he shows again.