This is an edition of the newsletter Show Notes, in which Samuel Hine reports from the front row of the fashion world. Sign up here to get it free.
Leave it to Jonathan Anderson to launch a definitive new era of Dior with a pair of cargo shorts.
Of course, these were not just any cargo shorts. They were closer to couture, made of 15 meters of cotton drill fabric, intricately pleated in the back to resemble the folds of a famous Christian Dior dress design. But still, it spoke volumes that the first model out at Friday afternoon’s Dior Men’s spring 2026 show was draped in shin-length cargoes, as well as a handsome donegal tweed blazer, Anderson’s take on another house signature, the Bar jacket.
Anderson is a master at designing high concept clothes that are relevant and desirable, which is precisely why, earlier this year, LVMH moved him from Loewe (having turned the once-sleepy Spanish leather goods house into a cultural phenomenon) to oversee the luxury group’s crown jewel in the midst of an industry-wide sales crisis. Put simply, his job is to make Dior cool again, and fast, which is a bigger project than simply recasting the collections. It’s about transforming a name seen by many as old world and out of touch into a modern, self-aware symbol of aspiration.
You could tell Anderson was onto something even before the boys with rubenesque curls hit the runway. In a preview that morning, Anderson described the importance of the collection’s first look: “It lays out exactly where I want to take this brand. It’s about formality, it is about history, it is about materiality.” Hence the cargo shorts. But the real opener of the show might as well have been when I was checking in with an iPad-holding Dior employee outside the large rectangular tent on the grounds of the Hôtel National des Invalides. As he checked my ID, I strongly considered asking him if I could buy his absolutely perfect gray flannel trousers (the day’s house uniform) off him after the show. Already I was lusting after a classic that Anderson made look brand new, and in a signature Dior fabric, to boot.
In the preview, Anderson described the collection as a “beginning point.” “It is establishing a language and a kind of touch and feel, a mood.” The pre-show mood was fizzy with expectation. The venue was built to resemble a room from one of Anderson’s favorite museums, Berlin’s Gemäldegalerie, with parquet wood floors, Dior-gray velvet walls, and a bright skylight. Hanging on the walls were two small masterpieces that apparently represent an obsession Anderson shares with Monsieur Dior himself: the 18th-century painter Jean Siméon Chardin. (“The Dutch still lives were incredibly tight, and Chardin loosened it. And then obviously a hundred years later you have Impressionism,” Anderson said.) LVMH kingpin Bernard Arnault smiled as he admired a warm still life of strawberries that Dior had borrowed from the Louvre.
Most guests, however, trained their attention on the Dior-clad front row, whose Franco-prep blazers and repp ties further set the tone for Anderson’s restart. Among the VIPs were A$AP Rocky, Rihanna, Roger Federer, Daniel Craig, Robert Pattinson, Josh O’Connor, Mia Goth, and Drew Starkey, as well as fashion designers like Donatella Versace, Pharrell, his Loewe successors Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez, and Simon Porte Jacquemus.
