After making his official debut at Dior during the menswear shows in June, Jonathan Anderson proceeded by soft launching womenswear on the Venice Film Festival red carpet last month. With the help of actresses Mia Goth, Greta Lee and Alba Rohrwacher, Anderson whet our appetite, but today (October 1), we finally got to feast on the Northern Irish designer’s Dior womenswear debut. Here’s what went down…

THE SHOW ACTUALLY BEGAN YESTERDAY 

For those not in Paris, watching from every corner of the world through a screen, the show began with film clips of Dior women (Jennifer Lawrence, Jisoo, 070 Shake, Mikey Madison and Sophie Wilde) being fitted for their show looks inside the Dior atelier. Though the fittings took place yesterday, the camera cut to the women arriving at the show venue this afternoon – wearing the looks they had fawned over with seamstresses the day before. 

Beyond those who gave us a glimpse behind the curtain, an abundance of famous faces showed up to support Anderson’s womenswear debut. Sat front row was Jenna Ortega,  Rosalía, Anya Taylor-Joy, Little Simz, Taylor Russell, Willow Smith and Jonathan Bailey. Once again, film director Luca Guadagnino was spotted out front and appeared to be filming something – adding fuel to the fire that he and Anderson could be working on a sequel to Dior and I (fingers crossed).  

ADAM CURTIS WELCOMED US TO THE HOUSE OF DIOR

Inside the venue, guests were seated in a circular formation, facing one another as well as a giant upside down pyramid. As the lights went down the pyramid lit up, surprising the audience with a short film from celebrated British documentary filmmaker, Adam Curtis. Using Curtis’ staple graphic lettering, the words “DO YOU DARE ENTER / THE HOUSE OF DIOR” flashed across the screen. For his latest work, Curtis took clips from different horror films every year since 1947 (when Dior first opened) and spliced them up with footage from the Dior archive. While illustrating Anderson’s personal anxiety through horror classics, Curtis also successfully chronicled some of the brand’s greatest hits. Spanning the past 70 years, the film was a not-so-gentle reminder of the house’s illustrious history, before we enter into Anderson’s new chapter. 

Soundtracked by Lana Del Rey’s “Born to Die”, the film included everything from Marlene Dietrich to Princess Diana at the 1996 Met Ball. There were shots of Christian Dior himself and his models swanning around the early couture salons; there was the Junon dress (and its many iterations); we saw John Galliano dressed as astronaut as well as his Dior couture AW05 collection; Raf Simons’ debut for Dior couture AW12, and even Maria Grazia Chiuri’s AW19 gold dollhouse dress. 

It takes a confident designer to remind the world of the brand’s most memorable moments, seconds before making your womenswear debut, but that’s exactly what Anderson intended to do. “Daring to enter the house of Dior requires an empathy with its history, a willingness to decode its language,” read the show notes. “Not to erase it, but to store it, looking ahead, coming back to bits, traces or entire silhouettes from time to time, like revisiting memories.”  

THE NEW LOOK GOT A NEW DIRECTION 

The first look of Dior’s new era was a stiff, white dress decorated with two bows and delicate pleats that curved all the way around the body uninterruptedly – like a blank page, punctuated with the pleats that Monsieur Dior was once obsessed with. Then came Anderson’s reinterpretations of the house’s most famous silhouettes, including the Bar jacket from 1947, which, with its nipped-in waist and padded hips, became the catalyst of the New Look. Anderson’s was a shrunken, shortened version in grey, complete with a pleated mini skirt, echoing the original ankle-length blueprint. Then there were the many, many capes – harking back to Monsieur Dior’s capes of the 40s and 50s – that came in long plaid styles, short pink styles and sweeping white iterations also seen on the back of Anya Taylor-Joy. 

Elsewhere, Anderson took us back to a time long before Monsieur Dior, to the 18th century – with panniers worn under gowns to give them that protruding appearance – and to the 1920s, with dropped waistlines and tiered skirts. Silk neckties made a reappearance, first seen during the men’s show in June (and on Rihanna’s infant sons), now modelled impeccably by Taylor Russell. 

According to the show notes, a series of angular, black hats symbolised what happens when history is locked away in a box: “Putting history into a box creates an implosion – hats implode into themselves.” In Anderson’s world, fashion history isn’t kept in an archive, it’s free to blend with and adapt to modern life. 

A STANDING OVATION FOR FASHION’S LEADING MAN 

Towards the end of the show, the soundtrack became a recital of Lord Byron’s famous 1814 poem, She Walks in Beauty, about a woman whose beauty is both external and internal. Like the house of Dior, which only exists in its grandeur today due to its rich history, the woman at the centre of Byron’s poem is beautiful because of her “days in goodness spent”. Anderson’s debut womenswear collection for Dior found the perfect balance in honouring the past, while modernising it with his own mischievous flair. As he appeared to take his bow, editors and celebs alike leapt to their feet – not because they were dashing to the next show, but to give Jonathan Anderson the standing ovation he deserved.