For his second season at Dior, Jonathan Anderson approaches the maison’s legacy differently. Where his debut felt almost pedagogical in its demonstration of respect, Fall/Winter 2026 saw him speaking the brand’s language with greater ease.
Silhouette remains Anderson’s sharpest tool. The bar jacket, long a symbol of Dior’s authority over the body, returns once more, though noticeably altered. Rendered in weightier fabrics than last season, the shape itself is made heavier.
Running parallel to Dior’s history is the presence of Paul Poiret, whose influence hovered heavily on the runway. It is a pointed reference. Poiret’s philosophy of dress stands in ideological opposition to Dior’s postwar reshaping of the female form. Anderson leans into this contradiction rather than smoothing it over. Billowing coats have expansive volumes. Slinky, shiny tank tops are almost literally paraphrased from Poiret’s ornate eveningwear.
We offer an interpretation: by interpolating silhouettes and stripping references of their original hierarchies, Anderson comments on luxury. Where craftsmanship and material excess were once its primary markers, now it's an act of creative assertion. Ornately embellished tops are worn with distressed skinny jeans (Hedi Slimane’s spirit lives on, thank god).
Instead of proving vehemence to Christian Dior alone, he’s creating a shared vocabulary, freely recombining references across eras. Slimane’s razor-thin silhouettes brush up against the theatricality of John Galliano’s Dior, both existing within the gravitational pull of the founder of the maison they all led at some point. The result is a collection that uses tradition not to stabilise the brand’s identity, but to push against the expectations that now surround it.
Words by Pedro Vasconcelos
