Jonathan Anderson - Designer, Creative Director of JW Anderson & Christian Dior

[fenty]

Its gonna be a long ride

 

[PDFSD]

Kim resigned due to personal reasons I’ve heard…

I don’t believe Delphine scrapped Anderson’s first collection - I agree with operational person to say he just hasn’t shown it to anybody yet. There was simply no time and on top of that Delphine (judging by her approach to designers at large) is not sticking her nose to creative processes. She is not Ferragamo or Gucci…

Delphine said it herself in the BOF article on June 2th - 2025 : From what I’ve already seen on men’s, it’s very impressive what he’s doing.

It is possible she could have said to him work more on it (whole collection can mean first 10 15 looks or 100 looks variations) who know its all possible she is via her Father the owner of Dior, they can do or say what they like.

her father did also same at start with NG when he saw the petit male he knew it will be a hit this was before the show
CD do have interval meeting to show collection development for big shows especially at the start, once all is running fine it happens far less and more at the mid end of each collection pre showing it to the public.

problem is when the ceo starts commenting on fabrics or colors or x son or x daughter likes this type of shoe or artist etc .
but a ceo or board can and will block if parts of main direction is not what is expected of an show collection or adv creative direction or talent selection etc

with billions at stake creative teams are progress monitored as everything else in a company

 

[Nimsay]

Crazy drama. So she locked him into Dior to prevent him from going to Gucci. JWA at Gucci seems perfect. Way better than Dior.

Yeah Im sure they use SalesForce or similar to manage the pipeline... So they can 100% check in whenever they like.

 

[Lola701]

I remember a girl from Prada told me (it was 2016) that the new arrival was very inconsistent. Sometimes 2 times a month, then next new arrival was after 3 months. I believe Prada was suffering big production disorder then...

Sorry totally unrelated to the JWA conversation but a friend of mine tried to have info on the reedition of the iconic shoes from past seasons for the SS2025 collection and they were all available through Pre-orders only.
So they stays doing whatever when it comes to the production of the collections.

 

[oioioi]

Crazy drama. So she locked him into Dior to prevent him from going to Gucci. JWA at Gucci seems perfect. Way better than Dior.

Yeah Im sure they use SalesForce or similar to manage the pipeline... So they can 100% check in whenever they like.

I got the impression it was always more Jdubs leveraged the Gucci offer on Arnaults, as Loewe has been so successful, to get the promotion he always wanted. He is very ambitious and always wanted a bigger project.

 

[Nimsay]

I think loewes main point of reference for Dior is that the runway line and boutique lines are so different but still fit the Loewe image. The Boutique line is prep basics with the anagram. I think thats what we are gonna see here.

I said if John Galliano was supported by a wearable boutique line (NOT diors latest victim) he wouldnt have been so stressed out by trying to please everyone.

I think we are going to see crazy runway with a wearable boutique line. I think the boutique will be monogrammed Dior classics. Im seeing a classic bar suit in Oblique twill…

Again for the day to day Dior customer - that isnt shopping RTW at a Pinnacle locations -the biggest change will be bags and accessories.

 

[Lola701]

I think loewes main point of reference for Dior is that the runway line and boutique lines are so different but still fit the Loewe image. The Boutique line is prep basics with the anagram. I think thats what we are gonna see here.

I said if John Galliano was supported by a wearable boutique line (NOT diors latest victim) he wouldnt have been so stressed out by trying to please everyone.

I think we are going to see crazy runway with a wearable boutique line. I think the boutique will be monogrammed Dior classics. Im seeing a classic bar suit in Oblique twill…

Again for the day to day Dior customer - that isnt shopping RTW at a Pinnacle locations -the biggest change will be bags and accessories.

Hmmm….
I think the discourse between runway and stores shouldn’t be seen from a narrow POV.

What people are seeing on the runway are still (we have to remember that) seasonal collections. And the offers grows as brands are growing. At Loewe when JWA started, there was a direct runway to stores reality, then it evolved into wardrobe oriented pieces that are part of a « permanent collection ».

As for all the brands, some runway ideas had a retail friendly version, top clients or people who had the means were able to pre-order the stuff from the runway. Some pieces were in limited edition and that’s how you build a coherent offer in stores.

John Galliano’s Dior was always supported by a wearable offer in stores. However, there was a shift. From his early collections to 2002, there was a rather direct thread between runway to shops as far as I can remember even though when he went « J’adore Dior » it was weird in Avenue Montaigne. But at the time, department stores were still very powerful. Between 2003 and 2004, there was a real disconnect however because the crazy runway shows only served to sell J’adore Dior tshirts and bags. And there was more and more disconnect between the boutiques and the shows. It culminated for the FW2004 collection, which was barely produced as what was mostly sold was the Dior Rasta collection.

If I remember well, at some point, the success of the tshirts jeopardized so much the image of Dior that they stopped producing them and as they were preparing to celebrate the decade of John and the anniversary of Dior, they changed their entire product offering, reintroduced the Lady Dior as The bag of the house (they overtime discontinued the Gaucho and others).

In reality, between 2007 and 2011, Dior was very conservative but there was a real coherence between runway and ships as the collections were already commercial, almost redundant. Even though it stopped growing, it was successful.

MGC’s Dior is very different from RAF’s for example but the retail reality is different. Distribution is much more controlled today. That’s why they weren’t overwhelmed this time with the success of t-shirts. MGC reintroduced a very commercial base, similar to what Galliano did, as the backbone of her success at Dior.

I think JWA should follow more the RAF’s model. I think the offering during the RAF years was fantastic. RAF wasn’t very imaginative but it had a good base.

Even Chanel by Karl. They only did tshirts for resort and sports collections. But the clients had seasonal prints blouses every season for example.

Logos are inevitable but they can be dangerous. I was told that the « Miss Dior » collection by MGC was a flop. Her regular non branded stuff sold more. It’s a question of balance.