Anderson’s Dior womenswear debut is a montage of ideas, but not a 'New Look'

Anderson’s Dior womenswear debut is a montage of ideas, but not a 'New Look'

PARIS — No other show so far at Paris Fashion Week has drawn such a feverish crush of celebrities, designers and press.

Anderson’s Dior womenswear debut is a montage of ideas, but not a 'New Look'

All eyes were on Jonathan Anderson — the Northern Irish designer who has already transformed Loewe into a global powerhouse of wit and craft — as he unveiled his first Dior womenswear collection on Wednesday.

The weight of history was everywhere. Dior was the fashion house that recrowned Paris as the world’s capital of fashion in 1947, when Christian Dior unveiled the “New Look.” That Bar jacket and wasp-waisted silhouette made headlines across a world still emerging from war. Every Dior designer since — from Yves Saint Laurent to John Galliano, Raf Simons and Maria Grazia Chiuri — has been judged by how they wrestle with that legacy.

Anderson, 41, is the first in Dior’s history to oversee both men’s and women’s lines, a responsibility with enormous cultural and commercial stakes.

The Bar jacket — the staple of Dior’s revolutionary New Look — was reimagined off-kilter, its peplum hoisted toward the bust, the hourglass skewed into something surreal. On the body, it sometimes looked ill-fitting, as if the poetry of the idea fought against proportion.

The result echoed his menswear: not a “New Look” with a capital N — as one critic put it — but a constellation of eclectic ideas. Critics who wanted a single, defining jolt — a Slimane-style bolt of clarity or a Simons-like manifesto — will have left underwhelmed. Instead, Anderson’s Dior unfolded like his opening montage: fragmentary and deliberately unresolved.

There were undeniable wins. The quality of the clothes' fabrics, finish and precise craft reinforced Dior’s atelier power. Historical references felt alive, not embalmed. And there was commercial oxygen in separates, ballooned skirts, accessories with bite.

Yet drawbacks lingered. The Hitchcockian menace of the opening film was never fully matched on the runway. The celebrity crush risked overshadowing the message. And the absence of one commanding silhouette means Anderson’s Dior remains, for now, a work in progress.

Still, the magnitude of this debut can’t be overstated. Anderson is part of a rare season of firsts: Matthieu Blazy’s first Chanel collection arrives next week, Pierpaolo Piccioli unveils his debut at Balenciaga on Oct. 4, and Demna has just made his Gucci debut in Milan via a Spike Jonze–directed film event. Together, they form a reshuffle that’s rewriting the luxury map.

Wednesday was less coronation than prologue: understated in tone, radical in detail, the show signaled the beginning of many possible paths.

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