An anticipated Paris show presenting Dior’s latest men’s collection, set to be released in 2026, and the first designed under ex-Loewe’s Jonathan Anderson direction, made subtle nods to European art and culture.
Dior presented its latest men’s collection at the Invalides, a museum complex centered on French military history, using a large black-and-white image of Christian Dior’s original salon as a backdrop. The display, which stretched across the entrance, was meant to signal the 80-year-old brand’s historic connection to French culture.
The Dior Homme’s 2026 Spring/Summer collection was the first designed by Anderson after taking up the position last month. He is now overseeing men’s and women’s designs at the house, the first designer in the house’s history to hold both roles simultaneously.
In the Paris show, Anderson, avoiding dramatic changes, mixed some of Dior’s heritage with the present, as first reported by critic Vanessa Friedman of the New York Times. Friedman wrote that the collection meshed “formal and casual, historic and contemporary,” while according to Dazed, Anderson was centering the “aristocrat,” as the show’s main concept, using 18th century European art and English tailoring to deliver the message.
Dazed also noted that the show’s stage was designed to mimic visuals from older museum exhibitions that use velvet as wallpaper, including the Berlin’s Gemäldegalerie gallery and New York’s Frick collection, both holding European art collections.
The Paris show drew from that design choice, covering the Invalides’ interior walls with off-white velvet, and hanging two paintings by 18th century French still-life artist Jean Siméon Chardin that were loaned from the National Galleries of Scotland and the Louvre.
Prior to the debut show, Anderson’s art references were leaking through online. Earlier this month, Dior published famous photographs of social and artistic royalty from Anderson’s “mood board,” on social media: separate polaroids of Lee Radizwill, an American-European princess and fixture in aristocratic circles, and painter Jean Michel-Basquiat, both subject of Andy Warhol.
Radizwill’s connection to Dior’s history began in the 1960s under the label’s then-creative director, Marc Bohan, who used her as a muse. (A 1977 silk robe designed by Bohan, gifted by Radizwill, is in the Met’s collection.)
Anderson’s first women’s collection will be presented in September.
