Jonathan Anderson Takes Over at Dior Men
The Northern Irish designer will take the reins of the French fashion house's men's line, and he will unveil his first collection in June.
A discreet but electric thrill ran through the hushed room of LVMH's general meeting this morning. Responding to a question posed with the feigned innocence of insiders, Bernard Arnault calmly dropped a bombshell: "I can tell you that the next Christian Dior Men's show, which will take place in June, will be designed by Jonathan Anderson," the CEO said. A few minutes later, the news was made official in a press release: the Northern Irish designer has been appointed the artistic director of men's collections at Dior.
At 40 years old, the designer has already made a significant mark on fashion. As founder of the JW Anderson label—a melting pot of avant-garde experimentation where androgyny, craftsmanship, and conceptual subversion meet—he has established a unique aesthetic, expertly orchestrated between troubled classicism and visual narrative. While serving as the creative director of Loewe, from which he left exactly one month ago, he built a new modernity, where the demands of gesture rubbed shoulders with sensory abstraction. In a decade, he transformed the Spanish house into a laboratory of emotions, restored leather to its former glory, and played with shapes like a sculptor of silhouettes.
Now, as heir to Kim Jones, whose time at Dior Men (or Dior Homme) was marked by an urban and pop reinvention of the menswear wardrobe, Anderson is expected to deliver something further. But pressure doesn't seem to be a foreign language for this fashion wunderkind, who is more than comfortable with fierce rigor. What does this new era promise? That will come June 27 at 2:30 p.m. in Paris when he presents his first collection for Dior Men during Men's Fashion Week.
The rumor mill is already buzzing: Could this appointment herald a global takeover, one day including artistic direction of the women's collections, too? For now, Maria Grazia Chiuri continues to put her stamp on the house's women's lines, recently presented in Kyoto. One thing is certain. With the arrival of Anderson, Dior Men is about to enter a new chapter that's more sensitive, more daring, and, perhaps, more romantic too.
