Jonathan Anderson debuted at Dior with a striking Paris show, blending legacy and provocation before an audience filled with stars.
With the words projected on a giant screen — “Do you dare enter… the House of Dior?” — Jonathan Anderson opened his first womenswear show for Dior in the Tuileries Gardens in Paris. The atmosphere was electric: among the guests were Anya Taylor-Joy, Charlize Theron, Jennifer Lawrence, Jenna Ortega, Jisoo, Jimin, Greta Lee, Mikey Madison, Rosalía and Willow Smith.
In the front row, Delphine Arnault, chief executive officer of Christian Dior Couture, sat alongside Brigitte Macron and Johnny Depp, the long-time ambassador of the fragrance Sauvage. Towering over the grey marble runway, an inverted pyramid served as a screen for a short film preceding the show, echoing the eerie tension of classic horror cinema.
Determined to break with past narratives, Anderson turned to filmmaker Adam Curtis, who created a montage blending archival Dior shows with clips from 1960s B-movies and Hitchcock classics. The sequence ended with a vortex of images collapsing into a shoebox, a metaphor for the designer’s creative process.
Anderson stressed that his tribute to figures such as Christian Dior, Maria Grazia Chiuri and especially John Galliano was not about nostalgia, but about carving his own path. “I have never felt so much pressure in my life. It used to be fashionable to love fashion; now it seems fashionable to destroy it”, he admitted.
The result was a show that silenced doubts. If his previous red carpet looks had raised eyebrows, here his creations conveyed lightness and sophistication. The opening design — a white pleated lampshade dress with an invisible structure — set the tone for a collection that balances heritage with daring, confirming Anderson’s intent to burn down the old rules and write a new chapter in Dior’s history.
