Perhaps it was inevitable that Jonathan Anderson would choose Hollywood for his debut Cruise show for Dior. After all, this is a designer who is well-versed in the potent combination of fashion and film – both on screen and on the red carpet. His costumes for Luca Guadagnino’s movie Challengers made tennis-core the trend of 2024. And earlier this month his Met Gala creation for Sabrina Carpenter—a dress fashioned from film strips of the 1954 movie Sabrina—went viral.
Last night in LA, Sabrina swapped that for a sunny yellow romantic gown and hairbow to sit front row alongside Hollywood greats (Lauren Hutton and Al Pacino) and the new guard: Love Story’s Grace Gummer, Mikey Madison and Greta Lee, who’d bought her proud parents along for the ride. Meanwhile a double-denim clad Miley Cyrus sauntered around the 1950s Chevrolets parked around the catwalk, as if the show was a ‘drive-thru’ movie.
‘We’re in LA and I quite like the fact that cruise shows are a moment to lean into the clichés and the realities,’ he said before the show, standing in the middle of a faux film set build in the newly opened David Geffen galleries of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
What that meant was actors posing in each of the cars, as the sun set over the surrounding palm trees and smoke billowed out into the shadowy catwalk. Then on came the car headlights, sending a spotlight through the gloom. Alfred Hitchcock would have been proud.
The retro feel was a clever reference to Mr Dior’s history with the golden-age of cinema—ho dressed everyone from Grace Kelly to Marilyn Monroe. Hollywood’s leading ladies loved his designs so much, Marlene Dietrich apparently told Hitchcock and the Warner Bros executives in charge of her 1950 film Stage Fright, ‘No Dior, no Dietrich!’ She got her way. Dior went on to create all the costumes—including a white jacket with black lapels that Anderson recreated using the original pattern for his Cruise ’27 catwalk. ‘People always think of Dior as a romantic, but they underestimate him as a businessman,’ Anderson said of Dior’s collaborations with the lead film studios of the time. ‘It’s normalised now, but at the time when the studio controlled the actors it was a clever way to buy into it.’
Dietrich’s Stage Fright jacket wasn’t the only famous on-screen Dior moment Anderson mined for the show. He also took inspiration from noughties style icon Carrie Bradshaw. ‘The saddle bag is very popular in America. When Carrie Bradshaw wore it on Sex And The City it just exploded here,’ he said, explaining how he’d updated the famous bag with motor key charms and metallic paint to mirror the vintage cars. More exciting still, Anderson bought back the newspaper print from the John Galliano AW 00 dress that Carrie Bradshaw famously wore in season three – a piece so coveted one recently sold at auction for £66,000. The race will be on, then, for Anderson’s newspaper print bags when this Cruise collection hits stores in November.
No doubt, the stars in the front row will debut some of the red-carpet worthy pieces before then, though: dresses embellished with Californian poppies, shredded Bar jackets and bias cut slinky satin gowns, draped with stoles strewn with oversized flowers. (Note, the blousy flower is now firmly one of Jonathan Anderson’s codes, also seen on the signature bow-adorned peep-toe shoes). ‘I was thinking about the idea of action. When something is thrown into the camera lens, I wanted it to have motion,’ he said of the heavy use of embellishment.
That extended to the bags, too. A hedgehog clutch and the frog clutch that Ruth Negga wore at Cannes earlier this month have already gone viral. In the Cruise show, Anderson added to his animals: a ladybird, bumblebee and, best of all, a snail appeared. Add to that the minaudière decorated with four leaf clovers (another recurring Anderson motif) and it was clear the designer will keep delivering for those who love to collect his whimsical pieces.
But this wasn’t just a collection for the A-list. Anderson also said he wanted to explore the American classics. That meant there was plenty of denim: albeit ripped and then embroidered with very fine silver chains that imitated strands of cotton. ‘It’s about dressing up in the daytime as well as dressing up in the evening,’ he said of the ordinary meets extraordinary. A collection of shirts—in relaxed flannel and starched poplin—were designed in collaboration with American artist Ed Ruscha. ‘When I think of LA, I think of Ruscha’s work, which has this fascinating sense of the mundane and how it relates to the city’s grandeur,’ he said of why he wanted to work with the 88-year-old artist known for his graphic work focussing on highways and gas stations.
Whilst these shirts felt far too special to pump gas, almost a year since taking the reins at the storied French house you can’t argue that Anderson is painting a strong picture for his new Dior: democratic but pretty darn special. A compelling combination.
This story first appeared on GRAZIA UK.
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