Anderson teases Dior collection blending literature, sport and Versailles glamour

Dior’s upcoming show is the most anticipated of Paris Men’s Fashion Week, and for days, the brand’s new creative director, Jonathan Anderson, has been dropping cryptic clues on social media, hinting at what his first collection might reveal.

Like a digital Hansel and Gretel trail, the 40-year-old Northern Irish designer has been teasing fashion followers with glimpses of what awaits when the curtain rises on Friday.

Even the show invitation — held in the 17th-century grandeur of Les Invalides — has gone viral. He began with Andy Warhol’s photographs of the American socialite Lee Radziwill — the sister of Jackie Kennedy — and artist Jean-Michel Basquiat. Both New Yorkers are “for me the epitome of style,” he said.

While the trail of posts started in the Big Apple, it seemed to be ending at the Palace of Versailles outside Paris, particularly in the cutesy hamlet Marie Antoinette had built in the grounds so she could play at being a peasant.

There were also snaps of a gilt clock in the Queen’s Bedchamber, a Dior ring set in one of the hamlet’s apple trees, and a brilliantly witty measuring tape in the shape of a snail perched on a leaf.

Tied in knots

Anderson also posted two rather endearing videos of French football star Kylian Mbappé putting on a tie and trying — and failing — to knot a dickie bow. “It’s not that bad, right?” the Real Madrid star and Dior ambassador asked, before laughing, “It is (that bad)?”

Anderson — a lover of literature — also seems to have returned to his homeland for inspiration, with three new versions of the brand’s Book Tote bags.

The first has “Dracula” in blood-red letters in a nod to Dublin writer Bram Stoker, while the “Les Liaisons Dangereuses” bag pays homage to French novelist Pierre Choderlos de Laclos. The enigmatic invitation to the show — a porcelain plate adorned with three eggs — has already gone viral on social media.

Anderson’s arrival at Dior had been flagged for months after he turned around the rather stuffy Spanish label Loewe, which is also owned by the French luxury giant LVMH.

Just weeks after he was named to head Dior Homme, he was also appointed creative director of Dior’s women’s collections and its haute couture. The last person to have such a free rein at the brand was its founder, Christian Dior.

Tricky time

With the luxury sector’s once bumper profits plummeting, Anderson’s appointment is an attempt to renew the fashion house after nine years under the Italian Maria Grazia Chiuri.

Anderson, the son of former Irish rugby captain Willie Anderson, trained at the London School of Fashion after starting on the shop floor at a Dublin department store.

His first big break was landing a job in Prada’s marketing department before launching his own brand, JW Anderson, in 2008.

“I think he is one of the most gifted talents of his generation,” said Alice Feillard, men’s buyer at Galeries Lafayette, Europe’s biggest department store group. “We saw what he achieved at Loewe — a really remarkable and brilliant body of work.”

“He is one of the most talented and undoubtedly prolific designers of recent years,” Adrien Communier, fashion editor for GQ France, told AFP. “There is something childlike yet very intellectual” about his collections, he said, “very cheeky, very bold… and really intriguing.”

Feillard said bringing together Dior’s three lines “makes sense. Dior Homme and Dior Femme are almost two different brands. I think now the real challenge for the brand is to establish a somewhat more coherent identity,” she said.