Get to Know Dior’s New Creative Director Jonathan Anderson

Jonathan Anderson is officially the creative director of Dior, though it hasn’t been a straightforward road. The designer announced his departure from Loewe back in March, and his appointment as the creative director of Dior Homme in April. Now, the circle has been completed. With Maria Grazia Chiuri’s exit from the French brand, Anderson can take over the whole operation—women’s, men’s, and haute couture. But despite Anderson’s long tenure at Loewe—as well as his success on his eponymous line JW Anderson and his frequent Uniqlo collaborations—Dior catapults him to an entirely new stratum. Considering he is about to take over one of the biggest brands in fashion, it seems appropriate to brush up on Anderson, so we’ve created a fact sheet on everything you need to know about Dior’s new creative director.

He comes from a family of rugby players.

Anderson’s father, Willie, was a star rugby player who played for Ireland between 1984 and 1990. His brother, Thomas, also played, although he eventually left the world of sports to pursue a career in law and operations for JW Anderson. Jonathan, though, didn’t inherit his family’s rugby prowess. “Growing up, I was never very good at rugby—I didn’t really enjoy it,” he said in a personal essay for The Gloss. “I did a bit of swimming.” Luckily, Willie never pushed his son to follow in his footsteps. “I never felt a pressure to be sporty or anything like that; our household was never that kind of system,” the designer said. In fact, it seems there are some benefits to Anderson’s sport-adjacent upbringing as he has found many commonalities between the world of sports and fashion. “It’s this idea of teamwork, of coaching people,” he said. “In a weird way I compare myself to a captain of a team because you’re trying to influence people to do something.”

He has dyslexia.

Anderson was diagnosed with the disorder when he was in primary school. In July 2024, when the designer received an honorary degree from the University for the Creative Arts, he opened up about his experience as a student and how dyslexia affected him. “I was probably not the best student,” he said, according to WWD. “Learning helped me to express myself...Be careful with the advice you get, and be aware it comes from someone else’s experience, ignore all of the above: rules are useless.”

He initially wanted to be an actor.

Before he wanted to be a designer, Anderson was interested in acting. When he was 18, he moved to Washington DC for drama school. “It took studying drama to realize it wasn’t for me,” he said. While he was there, though, Anderson became friends with someone in the costume department. “I spent lots of time with him instead of going to rehearsals, and he taught me everything important about American designers,” the designer told L'Etiquette. “He ignited that passion in me.”

He used to be obsessed with James Dean.

The interest began when Anderson moved to DC. “I think I read every single book on him,” he told The Cut in 2022. “The sexual ambiguity, the look—to the point where I dressed like that. I think I took up smoking because of him. He was quite sadistic and twisted in a way.”

He was once a shopboy.

When Anderson ran out of money in DC, he moved to Dublin where he got a job selling menswear at the department store Brown Thomas. He began doing visual merchandising for the store and dressing the mannequins. One day, a rep from Prada came in and saw his display which mixed Prada Sport with the main line. “He was a bit taken aback, but he loved what I’d done,” Anderson told L'Etiquette. Eventually, Anderson enrolled at the London School of Fashion and took a job at Prada to pay his way through. “My job was to take delivery of the merchandise, put it out in the store, and dress the windows,” he said. “It was there, in that setting, that I realized I could do it, that I belonged in that world.”

His first company went bankrupt.

In 2005, when Anderson was 21, he left his job at Prada and started his own label. Not JW Anderson. This one just produced accessories for “shitty stores,” as he puts it. “I mainly knitted scarves and accessories,” Anderson recalled. “We also made brooches. Well, we’d stick a feather on a knitted sweater and then sell it like that.” In addition to his label, Anderson worked on some short-term contracts, including for Lee Jeans, a job for which he spent a month in India. Eventually, though, the label went bankrupt. “I just remember the computers were seized by a bailiff,” he said. “He also took the fabrics and the orders.”

He designed for Versace.

Well, technically Versus Versace. Anderson created a collection for the Versace diffusion line with Donatella in just three weeks. “It was a weird collection with bags made of sticky tape that you could cut and fasten to your neck, but it worked,” he said.

His fall 2013 show for JW Anderson was a turning point.

Anderson has called it the “show that literally changed everything.” The designer sent men down the runway in ruffled shorts, strapless tops, and even dresses. It was actually a fairly simple collection, created from only three fabrics. Anderson was attempting to challenge the idea of masculinity, but he never imagined the collection would make as much noise as it did. Daily Mail said Anderson humiliated the models, but the collection is now regarded as a major moment in the evolution of genderless fashion. For his part, Anderson considers it “the best collection we ever did,” as he told 032c. “I don’t care what people say...when I look back at that collection, it did something. Because I felt like it didn’t compromise, and it was really arrogant as fuck. And I think that’s what was so important in that moment.”

So was Loewe spring/summer 2022.

If we’re looking back at Anderson’s career thus far in collections, it’s important to also note his spring/summer 2022 presentation for Loewe. Anderson emerged from the pandemic with a collection that was as whimsical and surreal as it was chic. Six deceptively simple column dresses opened the show, followed by jersey dresses with metal breastplates, chiffon balloon pants, and the return of ruffles lining holes in the skirts of dresses that completely recontextualized the slit. Sarah Mower of Vogue called it “a massive creative change,” and, looking back, the collection was a hint of what was to come from Anderson’s most prolific time at Loewe.

He’s a collector.

In 2017, Anderson founded the Loewe Craft Prize, which seeks out and supports artists with a distinct vision and taste for innovation. The Prize added to the existing work of the Loewe Foundation, founded in 1988 with the goal of supporting the arts. When Anderson joined the team, he centered the Foundation’s narrative and made Loewe one of the industry’s largest patrons of artists and craftsmen. Anderson’s support of craft acts as a natural extension of his interests. He is known as an avid collector, specifically of British studio potters of the postwar era, among other things.

“It’s a passion of mine,” he told W in 2017. “I collect craft. It inspires me. And creatively, it’s important to give back. I wouldn’t be in the situation that I am without a prize.” For eight years, the Prize has awarded unsung artisans with the 2025 winner receiving €50,000 and all 30 finalists getting a chance to exhibit their work at the Palais de Tokyo.

He’s a costume designer.

Of course, you likely know that. Anderson created the costumes for Luca Guadagnino’s two recent films, Challengers and Queer. “He’s so savvy about the history of the silhouette,” Guadagnino told W about his decision to tap Anderson for the job. “...I am in awe of Jonathan’s capacity to immerse himself in the story and the characters.” As for Anderson, he said of Queer, “I’ve never worked on a creative project that has changed me more, that has completely changed so many aspects of my life. I find it the most generous project to have worked on.”