“It’s a continuation, an elaboration. A compounding of referencing,” said Jonathan Anderson while talking through these pictures. The clothes we were looking at are Dior men’s pre-fall 2026 collection, the follow-on from Anderson’s wildly well-received debut at the maison. The sumptuously embroidered frock coats, the super-wide ‘Delft’ cargo shorts almost indistinguishable from skirts, and the tweed Bar jackets are already familiar cornerstones of his tenure after only six months.
Such is the weird acceleration of fashion perception these days—and Anderson is conscious of putting a brake on it. “The first collection was chapter one,” he said. “I don’t want to run away from it too quickly. This is chapter two. I’m trying to find a new vocabulary for Dior menswear. Reinforcing it, refining it. Every single detail counts. It’s giving importance to small things.”
Once you’ve calmed down from the instinct to rush about the visuals for new-news, the extent to which every element is an intense Andersonian study in the calibrations of class signifiers sinks in. Take in the opulence of a house on the Ile Saint-Louis, to begin with; it was occupied by Baudelaire in the 19th century, he noted. The gilded exclusivity of this Parisian setting becomes the backdrop for a huge sweep of categories, from haute to ordinaire.
And within that span, Anderson is absolutely capable of sneaking in plenty for perhaps even the most conservative existing Dior male clientele—gray flannel trousers, red chinos, French shirts, a casual-posh Harrington jacket, a rugby-stripe sweater, and a narrow blue velvet evening suit—while simultaneously playing to the fashion fanatic constituency. These are people who know that ‘Delft’ refers to the 1948 Christian Dior haute couture dress whose flying-buttress flanges inspired the voluminous cargo-short silhouette. And who might be into the fact that they can now be worn in rosebud-scattered calico, or perhaps stamped with a huge medieval-ish shield print with a Dior lucky bee at its center, inspired by something Anderson saw out of the corner of his eye when he was visiting “The Caravaggio exhibition in Rome.”
The magic, of course, is in how Anderson makes the out-there and the down-to-earth live together. His knack—carried through and amped up from his Loewe days—is how he contains classy, classic, and casually fashionable coherently in balance. Stamped with such branding catnip as Dior gilt medallion belt buckles and charmingly silly rabbit- and shrimp-shaped pins made from thimbles, sewing machine-parts and pin-cushions, this is Anderson’s guide to appearing as if you’re not trying that hard.
“As much as something can look very normal,” he concluded, “Delphine [Arnault, Dior’s CEO,] and I have been working on making sure that even a jersey is made in the best place in the world. Homing into the quality that will build a timeless wardrobe.”