Jonathan Anderson’s Dior Debut Is Slated for June
The former Loewe designer was confirmed as artistic director for men’s collections in a brief statement by LVMH chairman Bernard Arnault that left plenty of questions unanswered.
By Robert Williams
17 April 2025
BoF PROFESSIONAL
PARIS — “The next men’s fashion show of Christian Dior will take place in June, and Jonathan Anderson will be designing it,” LVMH chairman Bernard Arnault said in response to a question from an individual shareholder, who spoke up at the company’s annual meeting Thursday.
And just like that, fashion’s worst-kept secret was out of the bag. At least partially.
Industry sources say Anderson has been quietly building a team at Dior for months. In recent seasons, he skipped two shows for Loewe and two more at his namesake brand JW Anderson, lending credence to reports that the prolific designer and cultural curator, who grew Loewe from a niche collection to a megabrand-in-the-making, was diving headfirst into crafting a revamped aesthetic for 79-year-old Dior.
Lazaro Hernandez and Jack McCollough, founders of New York’s Proenza Schouler label, were named his successors at Loewe in March. But no confirmation had been given as to whether Anderson would indeed take the reins of Dior, where Kim Jones stepped down as men’s artistic director in January.
“Christian Dior Couture announces the appointment of Jonathan Anderson as artistic director of men’s collections,” the brand said in a terse statement following Arnault’s comment. “Anderson is working on the Dior Homme Summer 2026 collection, which he will present in Paris on June 27, 2025 at 2:30pm.”
The company has still never commented on widespread reports that Dior’s womenswear artistic director Maria Grazia Chiuri is on the way out, and also likely to be succeeded by Anderson following travel shows in Kyoto and Rome this spring. Despite the succession chatter hovering around her recent outings, Chiuri has continued to turn out collections at Dior’s breakneck pace: Rome on May 27 will be her fourth this year.
Several factors might explain LVMH’s protracted, piece-meal approach to confirming its latest designer moves.
Firstly, onboarding creative directors at France’s couture mega-brands requires a lengthy ramp-up due to the sheer volume of collections they show. Dior typically shows six women’s collections per year (four for ready-to-wear, two for haute couture). For menswear, it’s four collections per year, with two or three of them usually getting a runway show.
Chanel, which works at a similar pace, will have shown four studio collections between the announcement of Matthieu Blazy’s appointment and his debut show in September. At Dior, keeping Chiuri in place for as long as possible during Anderson’s ramp-up period would come with the benefit of avoiding too many unsigned shows.
Then there’s the matter of Chiuri’s contract. Sources say Chiuri is a rare creative director not to be engaged as a contractor, but rather as an employee on an indefinite contract. Such a contract would prohibit anyone else performing her job while she’s still in place.
Dior surely would have preferred not to acknowledge the shake-up until they were ready to provide a more comprehensive update. Having stayed tight-lipped for so long, what’s a few more weeks?
But the brand has grown exponentially during Chiuri’s and Jones’ tenures, becoming a significant contributor to LVMH’s bottom line. Estimated sales tripled in five years to top €9 billion ($10.2 billion) in 2023, according to HSBC, before falling slightly last year.
The group is now facing tough questions about the actions it’s taking to reverse slowing sales at Dior — and whether those decisions are being made fast enough. Fendi is also currently without a womenswear creative director.
Sales at LVMH fell 3 percent in the first three months of the year, the group said Monday. While the group does not break out performance for individual brands, Dior’s sales were below the average 5 percent decline in its fashion division, while Louis Vuitton’s performance was slightly above that mark, chief financial officer Cécile Cabanis said.
Shares tumbled on the worse-than-expected numbers, pushing the company’s market cap below that of rival Hermès for the first time ever (it has since pulled back ahead slightly). This comparison was surely a blow to Bernard Arnault, who had aggressively tried to acquire the orange brand in the 2010s.
With mounting trade tensions dampening consumer sentiment worldwide — particularly in the key US and Chinese markets — it’s become harder for luxury brands to chart a path to recovery. With so many problems outside his control, why not announce his “bird in hand” at Dior Homme?
Thus, out Anderson’s name came.
At Loewe, Anderson enjoyed sweeping authority over collections, branding, store decor and more, and some fashion fans were quick to suggest online that becoming one voice among many at Dior was beneath him.
Announcing a broader mandate for the designer out of the gate, and allowing him to debut with a couture or womenswear week bash might have been more exciting than what could seem like a “soft launch” at Dior Homme (despite the sub-brand having over a billion euros in estimated annual sales).
But the approach could also be a blessing for the designer: Dior is a machine, demanding over 10 collections per year, and Anderson is arriving there during luxury’s gloomiest moment since 2020.
And let’s not sell his debut short just yet. He wouldn’t be the first designer to show some womenswear during a men’s show.
