Jonathan Anderson reboots Dior menswear with subtle subversion and commercial savvy

Jonathan Anderson walked on to the Dior stage on Friday with the hardest brief in luxury fashion: reignite a 9.5 billion euro powerhouse whose growth has begun to slow and whose identity, at least on the men’s side, has drifted since the Hedi Slimane era.

The 40-year-old Northern Irishman is hardly a novice. LVMH took a minority stake in his JW Anderson label in 2013 and, in the same breath, installed him at Loewe, where he built the once-sleepy Spanish brand into a cult enterprise (and created the Puzzle bag in the process). The inevitable next step, Dior, finally materialised this spring after a messy sequence of leaks: a departure from Loewe, an initial appointment to menswear, and, following Maria Grazia Chiuri’s exit last month, full control of every Dior line.

A marketing breadcrumb trail

In the week before the show, Dior’s image machine offered clues. American art royalty Jean-Michel Basquiat and socialite Lee Radziwill, both captured by Andy Warhol, floated across mood-board teasers. A shaky Super-8-style film lingered on peonies, a chateau and a wooden canoe adrift on still water. Viewers, like the canoe, were asked to wait.

Context: revenue up, momentum down

The waiting has had real-world stakes. Dior’s turnover quadrupled between 2017 and 2023, yet HSBC flagged a slowdown from Q1 2024, citing consumer resistance perhaps to relentless price hikes and shifting priorites. Delphine Arnault, Dior’s chief executive, now talks less about fireworks and more about “quality and craft”. For Anderson, the unspoken mandate is clear: deliver covetable product, bags, sneakers, ready-to-wear, and a point of view that can translate into sustained demand.

The collection: Saltburn meets Warhol

On the runway the pressure translated into nonchalance. Shirts half-tucked, collars popped, one trouser leg rolled, looks that recalled the louche decadence of Saltburn spliced with a Warholian downtown shrug. The tailoring, less razor-sharp than Slimane’s fabled skinny suit, was offset by playful twists: a vampiric cape, a cable-knit in peony pink, Oscar-Wilde bows adorning the neck, coats in drapey tweeds. Anderson’s British eccentricity surfaced in tailcoats fastened with Napoleonic buttons and the ubiquitous look of a chino and polo shirt was reimagined as a nod to aristocratic decay, pleated, loose, and worn with the ease of someone who has never had to try too hard.

Were the cargo shorts and polos special? Perhaps not. But in their casual iteration they reset the palette, signalling that everyday wear is once again fair game for high fashion, and, crucially, high turnover.

Commercial chess moves

Accessories telegraphed intent: a hybrid sneaker-deck shoe, bright book bags, sweaters emblazoned with a refreshed lower-case Dior logo—bait for Gen Z and a lodestar for retail. Denim returned with pocket stitching first introduced by Slimane, proof that Anderson is willing to cannibalise house history where it works.

And all this is only the start. By LVMH arithmetic Anderson will produce roughly 8 collections a year across men’s, women’s and haute couture in addition to his own label and an ongoing collaboration with Uniqlo, a workload that would fell lesser talents. Yet his track record suggests an ability to inject nuance into the mundane: tweak a heel, pop a collar, ignite a cash register.

What the creases say

Christian Dior once championed post-war polish; Anderson’s wrinkled shirts propose something different. Perhaps dressing up now feels performative, or perhaps life—pandemic, conflict, cost-of-living angst—is simply too short to iron. Either way, Anderson has staked out a fresh clearing in the Dior forest. The real test will be whether this studied casualness converts into queues outside the stores. In a year, the peonies, like the revenue charts, will show whether the house is blooming again.