Turning the page is the essence of a designer debut, but Loewe alum Jonathan Anderson’s first Dior womenswear show did something almost unheard of. It began with an Adam Curtis–directed documentary short projected on a pyramidal screen inside the movie-theater–dark Tuileries show space recapping the maison’s many chapters written before Anderson. The film wove together moments from Dior’s seven previous creative directors, including Christian Dior’s “flower women” with fabric cinched at the waist to look like blossoms; Yves Saint Laurent’s dynamic trapeze shape; Gianfranco Ferré’s bold, architectural jewel tones; and John Galliano’s theatrical millinery. Anderson paid special tribute to his immediate predecessor, Maria Grazia Chiuri, with three clips capturing her art-world gravitas: the Penny Slinger fall 2019 couture dollhouse dress, smiling with frequent collaborator Mickalene Thomas, and the Orlando-inspired fall 2025 mise-en-scène staged by the late Robert Wilson.
“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,” Anderson wrote in his show notes. “Not to erase it, but to store it, looking ahead, coming back to bits, traces or entire silhouettes from time to time, like revisiting memories.” Beneath the screen sat an open Dior archival box; models emerged from behind it like dreamlike revenants. They wore familiar looks reimagined for spring 2026 through Anderson’s postmodern, slightly surreal sensibility, making Dior’s past unmistakably his own. The first look set the tone: a toile white cantilevered-hipline dress recalling Christian Dior’s fall 1952 Cigale, which sculpted an 18th-century-inspired silhouette without hoops or corset—a shape Chiuri also revisited in recent collections—now updated with a supersize bow draped from bodice to hemline.
Anderson has long loved a bell shape, from his Loewe and JW Anderson tutus and pannier dresses to the custom Dior couture bustle gown he crafted for Alba Rohrwacher at last month’s Venice Film Festival. Here, the style became a leitmotif, connecting his personal signature to Dior’s love of period-inspired theatricality, an extravagant thread of the maison’s DNA that started with the founder. It was apparent in sculpted peplum blazers styled with frayed denim miniskirts, chino skirts folded into architectural volumes recalling Anderson’s spring 2026 Dior menswear debut, transparent robe de style gowns worn over nude bodysuits, and caban coats expanded into dramatic proportions. Origami-like hats by Galliano’s frequent collaborator Stephen Jones, accompanying a third of the looks, channelled the pageantry of late ’90s collections, while rose-toe shoes felt like Anderson’s Dior update of his hit Loewe anthurium heel.
