“I want to land on a vibe.” This was how Dior designer Jonathan Anderson, one year into what is arguably the biggest job in fashion, summed up his assignment before his latest show. Expounding on chiffon and buttons with the intensity of a barrister delivering a closing speech in the high court, ruffling his hair as if his mind might at any moment explode with ideas, Anderson brings more brainpower to the pursuit of the vibe than the superficial phrasing suggests.
The vibe is coming in to land. This Dior show felt like an event, which is the bar Christian Dior set for his successors back in 1947, when his New Look silhouette made front pages all over the world. Overnight, trees had emerged out of the circular pond in the Tuileries Garden in Paris, and – thanks to the deep pockets of owners LVMH – a magical mist conjured to swirl around them, lending a cinematic grandeur to the slender catwalk spanning the water. (The trees will be replanted elsewhere in the gardens, after the show.)
“We are in search of a silhouette,” Anderson explained. The show began and ended with a distinctive shape: a short, kicky skirt in layers of chiffon, the layers catching the light like breaking surf, worn with a soft, short jacket or layers of sheer shirting. He is resistant to being pinned down to one look, though, so in between there were bronze metallic trousers, and luxurious double-breasted coats, and strapless bow-trimmed cocktail dresses tightly frilled as carnation petals.
“People have a preconceived idea of what Dior should be, and you don’t take the customer from zero to 100 overnight,” he said. His emotional tone is naturally bone-dry, but he is finding a take on “romantic” – a word that is central to Dior, and one that he kept returning to – where he can take that customer somewhere new. His idea of romance, he said, is Jane Austen. Romance, for Anderson, is never going to mean losing his head. If Dior is to get their happy ending, expect plenty of wry asides along the way.
“It’s not about, ‘is it wearable or not wearable?’,” he said. “It’s not about, ‘is it going to be worn in the street?’ It’s more about: this is a person, a look, I would love to see in the street.” Nonetheless, many of the clothes were rarefied takes on what is being worn on the chic streets around the Tuileries right now; oversized untucked shirts, sheer fabrics worn in layers, fringed edges, a glimpse of bra, shots of joyful colour.
The luxury is in the detail: Murano glass buttons, shawl-collar jackets with the underside of the lapel lined in faux fur, to be glimpsed when a collar is popped. Nuggets of Dior’s long history threaded through the lineup included houndstooth, a Dior classic made unstodgy by being reimagined in sheer chiffon layers, a Barn jacket meets Bar jacket mashup with a corduroy collar, and a revival of zippered sandals from John Galliano’s era at Dior. “This year was about trying to rattle the brand and see what falls out,” Anderson said. “It’s never going to be just one thing, I’d get bored.”
