Jonathan Anderson - Designer, Creative Director of J.W. Anderson & Loewe

[proseccotabis]

I can’t believe that of all people it’s with JWA that they’re giving the whole Dior fashion line. But I guess it’s much better than the duo we have there right now.

Is MGC really staying with LVHM? I actually want her for Gucci ngl.

I think JW might be the best choice for Dior..his stuff is a given commercial success + the press loves him..not many can boast this

 

[JohannesL]

Does anyone know/or could take an educated guess as to when JW is expected to show his first Dior collection? (He is definitely going there so not speaking in maybe's here)
I can't imagine he would show HC in June, that would be insane.. and with a full MGC Womens team still there till end of May.

Wait, so Hedi is out of race for Dior? I thought he was desperate for the position since he didn’t get Chanel.

 

[Lola701]

Thanks for your insight. I have to admit I stumbled across TFS a year ago and have been lurking on it on/off when I have time, and I only created an account recently to interact on these threads because I enjoy your grounded industry observations and well formed designer/fashion knowledge Lola701.

Talking about Pucci, I wonder how long Camille Miceli will hold onto that gig? They are doing some of the worst random shoe range I've seen in awhile, esp for a brand like Pucci that I feel the footwear brief and desirability could be quite straightforward.

MGC's next position is known internally within LVMH, I just wonder if he can 'move in' when the Womens team is there and Kim Jones is leaving earlier in March. I guess you mean they can set up a studio outside somewhere for JW's team to start on?

Very intrigued what the stores will look like under his CD, or if it will be the same as I heard Bernard Arnault does not allow interior changes? I hope the vitrines could at least be a bit more inspiring

Thank you!

They have the job to Miceli as a pure act of loyalty. They wanted to give the job to Guillaume Henry first but he wanted to do Patou instead.

I think they have gave up on Pucci…Weirdly at the time when they finally managed to get rid of the heiress.

So Miceli’s job was to build a lifestyle brand in a way.

I think MGC would be great for Pucci. She is insanely Italian and commercial. While I loved the Dundas era + that one collection with fringes from the MSGM guy, I think she would do a terrific job at Pucci.

Camille Miceli is great at doing Jewelry. She did fabulous things at LV under MJ and NG and her jewelry at Dior was also fabulous. I think they should have gave her the CD of Bulgari or something like that. Clothes on such a capacity are not her thing.

Dior is huge, they can absorb his team and MGC will move with her lieutenants.

The setting a studio apart is more of a logistic idea.
JWA’s farewell in March leaves him 3 months to prepare for a debut Couture collection but he won’t be there with Benjamin Bruno and his design team doing a collection at Avenue Montaigne with MGC in the building lol.

They can set him up a small studio where he could start developing his ideas for his collection.

The stores won’t change. Arnault is very hands on regarding that. Peter Marino will continue his job as usual.
It will definitely be a different setting for JWA as he will get into a well oiled machine.

But at the end, it’s not hurting the brand.
I think about Balenciaga, Gucci and Alexander McQueen that will undeniably go into a stores overhaul once their current CD leaves.

 

[PDFSD]

JWA at Dior i am ready for it its the right touch of modern and fun and easy digested pop intellectualism (even if when he will explain the collections it's like pretentious chalk sound on a school board annoying ASF)

Makes sense as Chanel is going as well for similar crafty fetishized pseudo intellectual route of Blazzy

its like VV pitted against MGC both doing highly commercial clothes resulting in a snooze fest

just replacing womens practicality to design for a new guard of gay pop empty intellectuals ....popcorn season is open 2025

 

[Lola701]

My only wish for JWA at Dior: No campaign shot by Teller!

 

[proseccotabis]

My only wish for JWA at Dior: No campaign shot by Teller!

If that happens I will actually lose my mind lol

 

[FashioNarrating]

Finding it curious that no one is commenting on how odd it would be - or should I say "is" - to move JWA to Dior.. maybe because there have been so many unfitting/unlikely creative director announcements during the last decade that everyone got used to it at this point? I was expecting LVMH to keep Jonathan at Loewe, let him play and collect the money from high-class European gays and their fashion-forward str8 friends til it's time to take over Vuitton - he is great at picking interesting-yet-commercial bags and accessories overall, however too experimental and architecture-focused for Dior's rtw imo, whereas at LV he could do his thing and explore proportions, textures and fabric manipulations on a larger scale - the largest probably. Giving him the brand known for a comparably conventional vision of femininity, swathes of fabric and overall opulence is rather puzzling to me, though I get the possibility of the Arnaults wanting to compete with Chanel again via placing their own artisanally-focused homo at the helm of a couture house founded by Coco's rival. I was rooting for Sarah Burton to take over Dior (and Ackermann at Givenchy instead of Tom Ford), but I could honestly name a few other designers who seem more suited to take over that particular house.

 

[BalkaniStaCouture]

Honestly he will suck at Dior!!!

 

[Frederic01]

Why Dior Needs a Change​

Kim Jones is exiting the brand, with Maria Grazia Chiuri expected to follow suit in the coming months. Will a creative shakeup reinvigorate excitement for LVMH’s second-biggest brand?
By ROBERT WILLIAMS / 31 January 2025



This week, Dior announced it would part ways with men’s artistic director Kim Jones.

A masterful tailor and deft curator of men’s style, Jones reconnected Dior Homme with the brand’s founding codes — creating a regal fantasy filled with draped jackets, floral motifs and pearl embellishments — as well as a proposing utilitarian everyday luxuries like combat boots and bomber jackets. The brand cultivated a younger, more global audience by collaborating with brands like Nike, Birkenstock and Stone Island as well as animating its collections by teaming up with contemporary artists such as Peter Doig, Hylton Nel, Kaws and more.

Jones was prolific, creating two men’s shows in Paris each year, traveling shows for pre-fall, and countless commercial capsules. And his vision helped fuel rapid growth: Dior’s sales of men’s products grew by around five-fold, topping 1.2 billion by 2021 according to market sources (owner LVMH does not break out sales for individual brands).

It’s hard to imagine, then, why Dior would let Jones go. (The English designer’s next moves are not known).

But a broader shakeup is in the works at Dior, where sources say LVMH is preparing to transfer Jonathan Anderson, the star designer of its breakout Loewe unit, to a top creative role.

In addition to Jones’ exit, industry sources say womenswear artistic director Maria Grazia Chiuri is also on the way out. A pre-fall show in Kyoto in April and a cruise show in Rome, her hometown, in May are expected to be her last outings for the brand.

Chiuri, too, has transformed Dior with a collaborative, globally-minded and commercially potent vision. Her storytelling has elevated women artists, photographers, filmmakers and craftspeople, while a keen eye for product design helped the brand create a broader menu of commercial hits across categories, which powered rapid growth and reduced the brand’s dependence on its flagship Lady Dior range.

According to HSBC estimates, Dior’s overall sales almost quadrupled from €2.7 billion in 2018 to more than €9 billion in 2023. But the brand started to slip in 2024. While LVMH has only signalled that Dior’s growth is “slightly below average,” analysts say sales may have declined by a double-digit percentage in recent months.

At a press conference Tuesday, LVMH chairman Bernard Arnault emphasised that Dior continues to outperform other French couture houses in a rocky market. But his company is known for taking swift action at the first sign of softness at its fashion brands, often preferring to open a new cycle of growth than defend an old one.

The reasons Dior is ready for a creative shakeup go beyond commercial softness. At the brand’s haute couture show Monday, a key ingredient was missing amid the crowd crush of celebrity ambassadors and camera crews: genuine anticipation for the clothes. New silhouettes and masterful craft techniques proposed by Chiuri faded into the backdrop — literally in this case, as the collection was shown once more against a monumental tapestry in a black box behind the Musée Rodin.

After more than 8 years of Chiuri staging 6 collections per year across ready-to-wear and couture, the necessary tension between a fashion brand and its audience — where anticipation builds before each new collection — has eroded, giving way to an ethos of push, push, push.

Dior risks falling into a similar trap as Alessandro Michele’s Gucci, whose boom was driven by brushing off critique and staying true to its designer’s vision. But that support became counterproductive, and it found itself stuck in an aesthetic that felt increasingly time-stamped. Similarly, Dior stood by Maria Grazia Chiuri’s vision for a more casual, joyful and easy-to-wear couture house, giving the designer time to reinforce her vision with layers of research and craft that eventually won over many early critics.

The problem, then, becomes realising when the detractors are right. In recent seasons, the brand has continued to put its full marketing muscle behind its womenswear image, rolling it out across categories (including, for the first time, cosmetics and perfume), perhaps without paying enough attention to signs it was losing appeal.

The picture isn’t terribly different for Dior men’s, whose thundering string soundtracks and streetwear-inflected collaborations increasingly felt like business as usual.

As Dior struggles to respond to a softer luxury market with ultra-consistent creativity, CEO Delphine Arnaulthas brought in additional management support: including a new managing director hired from Miu Miu, Benedetta Petruzzo, and a new chief commercial officer, Nicolas Baretzski, as well as elevating longtime communications boss Olivier Bialobos to the role of deputy CEO. But in the absence of new stories to tell, teams are left to iterate faster and louder.

“Consistency, having collections that build on each other — that’s a good thing in fashion, but it can only take you so far. There’s the risk that the market will eventually lose interest,” said Alice Bouleau, partner at executive search firm Sterling International.

While details of the transition remain unconfirmed, sources say Anderson is gunning for sweeping authority across men’s and women’s — which would see the lines unified under a single designer for the first time since the creation of Dior Homme under Hedi Slimane in 2001.

Anderson understands that the context in which fashion collections are shown can be as important as their content. While Dior’s sprawling machine helped power years of recent expansion, an exacting, directional designer with a broad creative mandate may now be needed to update some of the more cheesy elements of the brand’s template.

Following up either Jones’ or Chiuri’s era-defining, best-selling visions is sure to be a Herculean task — to do both at once may be near impossible. But it just might work.

BOF

 

[Alquimista]

Since i'm not a big fan of Dior, the news are amazing!

Jonathan has no sense of the female form, his visual vocabulary is quite dry and he's just not even close to a opulent aesthetic.

Its going to be hilarious.

 

[Creative]

Lol
Proenza Schouler are whole industry’s biggest joke. Even LVMH headhunters wont touch them with the longest pole. Those guys aint designers. They copy pasters.

Haha reading this now is kinda funny. I could’ve written the exact same thing though