Jonathan Anderson’s much-awaited debut filters Dior through his own aesthetic codes, with consumer-baits thrown in for good measure

If you saw the livestream of Dior’s spring/summer 2026 show, you might have enjoyed the action at least an hour ahead of the advertised start time. Thirty minutes before the show began, the live chat was filled—inundated, really—with heart emojis and two names: Jimin and Jisoo. And then out of the blue, Lingorm, the Thai influencer-duo who have now secured their homeland’s monopoly on attention. By then, there were 5,300 viewers, rising to 34,496, when the screen showed the idols and other stars arriving. At the long-anticipated start, that number rose to 36,629. That was not bad a figure for viewership. But at the end of a show that was more amusing than groundbreaking, we wondered if Dior’s off-kilter styling, including some fantastic neo-Napoleanic tricornes, resonated with those fervid viewers. Or, if BTS’s Park Jimin, in an unbuttoned, peak-lapelled tuxedo jacket sans the shirt, was really the draw.

Jonathan Anderson’s first womenswear collection for Dior was without doubt the most anticipated of the season’s many debuts, more so after his normcore-redux men’s show in June and the roughly dozen disconnected teases that various stars wore to red carpet events these past two months. The collection seemed to be a continued rumination on how to make the past relevant and palatable in his own distinct way. It was less a single, seismic “New Look” revolution that many were hoping for—us too—and more a quiet, intellectual dialogue with the archives. And it was a rapid-fire idea torrent, sometimes bordering on the scattershot. It felt like Mr Anderson was still setting the stage, inviting us for a closer read, rather than delivering an immediate punch.

Staying more upbeat, we thought that it signaled a designer more interested in meaning and long-term, subtle evolution than immediate, explosive spectacle—though, to be certain, the show itself certainly was. But the truth was, as the 74 looks came and went, we did ask ourselves: Where was the cleverness, the tongue-in-cheek, the perversion? Or were they so subtle that they escaped the casual viewer? Or did one need to belong to a certain intelligentsia to understand it? Mr Anderson is a designer with an idiosyncratic goof.; he veers towards an intellectual approach, mixed with a sense of the absurd or the genuinely strange. And all that concocting at Dior, which, to us, recalled Nicolas Ghesquière at kindred brand Louis Vuitton, was a bumper of ideas, but assembled in a vaguely Frankensteinian way.

It did not help that the unusually long prelude to the show—a montage of Dior looks from all past designers, projected on an inverted pyramid—gave the impression of a horror flick, complete wth canned, blood-curdling screams. Even the runway was initially darkened to intensify the fright. It is tempting to read more than just a greatest-hits screening into it, and we shall. Dior is not an average fashion house. It is not unreasonable to assume that once inside, Mr Anderson was burdened by the ghost of heritage, the phantoms of the archive and the pontianaks of those who came before him. The horror reel, then, was a warning against becoming spiritually tethered to the past, suggesting that blind nostalgia can stifle creativity or make the brand irrelevant.

But ghosts talk among themselves too. And what a clatter they made. Mr Anderson let it be audible that the tension between Dior’s history expressed as a fragmentary, unresolved montage was far more interesting than a clear-cut approach. Keen eyes would have spotted some spectres of the past, whether at Loewe or at his eponymous house. The most obvious was the white, elongated bib-front—now with scalloped edge—that was so much a signature, it was part of the store staff’s uniforms. There was also the exaggerated, padded hips and the airy breaths of skirts, now in lace, and with alar extensions in the rear, that had ‘booked for the red carpet’ all over it. Or the jaunty, asymmetric mini-skirts that would no doubt be TikTok’s favourite new hemline. Familiarity do breed devotion.

Some details followed a clear thread from his earlier Dior men’s—the most unambiguous were the removable, choker-like bow ties, now made in the same fabric as the shirts, but still throttled. And the “side-looped flanges”, inspired by the stiff architecture of a 1948 Dior couture dress, Cigale. The transplant, initially seen at the rear of cargo skorts, now appeared on trenchcoats and on skirts. As with the men’s show, Mr Anderson offered a transfigured Bar Suit—it was truncated and slightly tented in the rear. There was also the version with oval cutouts on each side of the jacket’s front, just above the hem. Curious was one look—it appeared to appeal to women who enjoy a good tee-off: a baby polo shirt with set-in sleeves, worn with pleated chinos. The logic of its inclusion remains opaque. As the finale came on, it was clear that there was a lot to see. Perhaps, a tad too much, making it impossible to rank the highlights without feeling directionally challenged.

There abundance of ideas was clear, but so too was the paucity of gratification. Ultimately, the collection lacked the vital emotional punch of revolution, revealing itself to be rather a pastiche of past work, with an over-reliance on Mr Anderson’s own codes, some of them the tired elevation of wardrobe staples. Before the show started, videos of celebrities arriving at the maison to try the clothes assigned to them were streamed. Many were in such basic pieces, including the T-shirt version of his remade Book tote, that we thought the collection was doomed. It was clever misdirection designed to manage expectations and maximize media noise. In the end, the looks of the show were more styled than what the brand ambassadors received. In choosing cunning over clarity, Jonathan Anderson delivered a strategy that satisfied LVMH’s crave for pure profit power. But for those hoping for Dior’s spirit to ignite a new chapter, this debut felt more like a charmingly executed intellectual exercise, awaiting emotional resonance.

Screen shot (top): dior/YouTube. Photos: Dior