Hi, this is Imran Ahmed, founder and CEO of The Business of Fashion. Welcome to a special episode of the BOF podcast. It's Monday, January 26th. Jonathan Anderson's haute couture debut for Dior, which took place earlier today at the Musée Rodin in Paris, was perhaps the most anticipated moment so far in his bid to re-energize the luxury mega brand. In December, I joined Jonathan in Paris just as that collection was coming together to learn how he's reimagining couture as a creative laboratory that feeds the entire maison, and to reflect on his journey at Dior thus far. In this exclusive interview, Jonathan talks about why couture still needs to exist, how endangered craft can be protected, and the very human reality of leading a global fashion machine like Christian Dior. Here's Jonathan Anderson on the BOF podcast. Jonathan Anderson, welcome to the BOF podcast.
Thank you very much for having me.
Do you know, I was thinking, do you remember we sat down for that conversation when you were just moving into your first post-LVMH JW Anderson offices? I think that was what year was it that...
Used? That was in I'm trying to work out which building. I think that was in Shackle Lane.
Yeah. Or something like that. And that was just when LVMH had invested in JW Anderson. So that was...
Okay, so it's been 10 years coming. We're sitting here in the space where typically you were doing your men's collections. But now you're doing haute couture fittings here as well.
And women's. And it's December 16th.
So by the time this comes out, it's going to be many weeks later. But it was really cool just now to have a look through all of your ideas and how you're thinking about couture, your first couture collection. And I guess I wanted to start with when you're thinking about, you know, you have these 18 collections you're doing. Some of them are for Jonathan Anderson or JW Anderson, some of them are for Dior. What do you see as the purpose of couture first for you as a creative person and then also in this massive enterprise that is Dior? What's the goal or the purpose of couture?
Well, it's the first—if someone had asked me about a year and a half ago about couture, I would have been like I had never projected myself into couture. I never really understood it and I would have probably nonchalantly said something like, 'Well, I think it's irrelevant' or something. I probably would have said something like that because I never really understood it. I never understood the glamour behind it. There was always something very glamorous or something kind of at bay with the idea of the hierarchy of fashion. And now I have a completely different understanding of it. I feel like I'm doing—I kind of joke every time I'm in a fitting, I feel like I'm doing a PhD in couture because I have an amazing atelier and every day you are learning the process of something that has been done for so long in France. It is an institution in itself. There are rules, there are so many different things you can and cannot do. In a weird way, I was trying to work out how do I approach that, how can I relate to it. At the beginning, I found it very difficult to relate until they did one dress, and then I was like, 'Okay, I'm kind of addicted.'
And so the purpose of couture, in the reinvention that you're bringing to Dior, now that you've understood it a bit and seen the insight, how do you see it fitting into what you're doing here?
For me, it's a very emotional process actually. I find it quite emotional because it is something steeped in history and people who have been working for many designers inside this house who are still here. So you have to go into a kind of performative mode where you say, 'Yes, I can do this,' and at the same time being like, 'I'm totally confused.' Impostor syndrome. But I was trying to think about couture itself and how do we reframe the narrative. I was thinking of things I like in craft and what I have done in craft over the last 10 years, and I was thinking couture is kind of like an endangered craft, as a mindset, a mythology of making with hand. And I thought, in a weird way, what Dior is doing and other couture houses, of which there are not very many left, is protecting this endangered craft as a kind of national symbol of making. Once I got into that mind space, I was able to work out what I want from it and what is new for Dior in a landscape that has had some of my heroes.
So when you first stepped into the atelier and were trying to figure out where you were going to start, was there a first image or idea lodged in your creative brain? What was the starting point?
I think my starting point was one of my dearest friends, Marilyn Leong, who I have worked with many times. For me, her vessels are the idea of form and silhouette. I was thinking that is what Dior was so great at—the silhouette, the sketch. I have this one vase that I love of hers which for me was always like a body. She always jokes and says, 'For me, that vase is like Naomi Campbell.' I was like, 'Okay, what is a dress that is a vase that ultimately is Naomi Campbell and what is that in couture?' So I showed them this vessel and I liked the idea that it was pleated and it looked like it was being spun, like the movement of clay as you build it. I don't really sketch, but it was the first time I sketched something on a piece of paper very badly and I was like, 'Can we resolve this?' And then to finish it off, like Dior, we put a bow on it. That was about a month and a half into the job, just before the summer.
And so that shape or form made its way into the women's ready-to-wear, right?
Which was kind of half-resolved, so it was quite interesting to see it cut and shortened. But the structure is not what the structure is in couture.
So what's the difference between the ready-to-wear version and the couture version?
Inside the couture one, you have these tiny lines of tulle that are gathered, which make a kind of candy floss, as I would describe it. They build a very light structure that holds the shape so you can push it in and it has memory. Whereas the one in the ready-to-wear show was more done by machine pleating, so a more industrial process. Everything in couture is pleated by hand onto the carcass of the shape and then stitched down to keep the shape. When I saw the tulle of it, I was like, 'Okay, we have to open the women's wear show with a shorter version of it.' This is why Dior is Dior and why Dior couture needs to exist because they are practicing a skill that if you don't practice would disappear. Everything is done by hand. By doing things by hand, things become a lot rounder. The seam is rounder, less flat. That has taken me time to get used to.
And when you started meeting some of the people in the atelier, some of whom have worked with many of your predecessors, what surprised you most about their skills, the way they work, their dedication to this craft?
I think what is interesting is it's like a little mini city of people, like you have the cheese shop and the butcher. They stay in their own area—someone who does flou only does flou. There is no cross-pollination. They take on a look and look after it through the entire process. It's super highly specialized to the point where certain things have to be given to certain people; you can't move it around. It was interesting to meet all these individuals with completely different personalities in different buildings. You have the historical atelier above the store, and then four other ateliers doing little camps. Then you have embroidery houses and feather houses. All these different people come in and you brief them on tiny little swatches and then they become something. It might be a fabric I found, and we try to see if a mill still even does it.
Is it intimidating working with so many craftspeople and artisans?
Of course it was. I think I'm still intimidated until the show is done. I feel a bit like an impostor. People don't comprehend until you're there—there are only about five or six houses at this scale. So you have to be able to perform, which is very scary and intimidating. But for me, what I learned at Loewe is you have to start somewhere. It's about progression. You have to learn through it. If I go to work and it becomes a formula, then I get bored. So everything I do at the moment is for the first time: the first couture, the first year. You're meeting hundreds of people and trying to grab hold of this like a running buffalo. It's incredibly intense. Couture adds this other layer—when you're inside the house in Paris, it comes with a different thing.
Did you ever come with an idea and they said no, that's just not possible? Or are they able to do anything?
They're able to do anything. There's never no. In a weird way, it's like cars: here is an archetype for a brand new car, and it may never go on the road, but we are going to make it happen. I quite like that. For example, in fabric, you'll ask, 'Do you think we can reproduce this 16th-century fabric?' They'll say, 'We won't be able to get it like this, but we will be able to do it like this,' or 'We will get a mill that can reopen looms to do it.'
That must be quite refreshing as a creative person, because you hear no a lot normally, right?
Yes, and it's the one part of the business where there is no no because it's about sheer creativity and making. We changed the calendar for it because I cannot do a couture show in 30 days—it's impossible. So we changed it to a six-month cycle, which is the old way of doing things. We work on it like a project. I want it to be about form, these three different things, off we go. Then you enjoy the look and through the process you reject or embrace it. It's experimentation. For me it's a lab.
You said 'lab.' Tell me more about that. How is it a lab for you in the wider Dior universe?
Because we run it over six months and while we're testing weird and wonderful things, it can be in bags, shoes, lasts, bonding techniques, hands. You learn something and then you can utilize it elsewhere. For example, we open looms, we can use that fabric in men's or other collections. It's a thought process that I think can be interesting.
It feels like you've always worked that way, never with these resources, but you've always had this approach of doing something experimental and then somehow it turns into something that sells.
Yes. This allows two six-month blocks of continuity where inside that I have men's, pre-collections, ready-to-wear, pre-fall, capsules. This becomes the backbone of the brand. It breaks up the creative cycle. For next year, I like to start the year as a year because I came in midway. It's nice to have the cycle: men's, couture, women's, resort, women's again. With fabrics, mills, shoes, you try to build your own library. But in a house like Dior, you want things that are long-term. I started from nothing here; everyone has a vision of Dior.
How much do you think about what people outside this bubble want, and how much do you feel confined by the archive? How much do you lean into your own creative instincts?
I think I had two months this year where I was in a kind of sound cooker of information. You're looking at business, what you want to bring, closing a chapter at JW Anderson, rebranding, and at the same time trying to think what I do at Dior that creates a blank space. The shows were about proposing a question to myself and the audience: 'What do we see Dior as?' I don't work in a formula; I build a vibe or culture around a brand, but then everything will be different. You have bags and core product, but the energy is different. How do you get the system to work around that when it was doing a more singular look? You have to cross-pollinate so there is a built language. It takes time. I know what is right because that's why I'm here. You have to remind yourself that you have to take the journey that is right for the brand, not what is needed. It's easy to hype something, but when dealing with structure and collection planning, that's the real part.
So when we were looking just now, maybe you can walk us through the different elements because there were, as I expected, a whole bunch of looks. But alongside those looks and some processes, there were also one-of-a-kind pieces, bags, jewelry. You've expanded the universe of couture at Dior.
I was thinking of when I was younger, there were these small books on designers in libraries. I was obsessed with Jean Paul Gaultier when he would do a couture show—it was an entire theme, you nearly had to buy the entire look to get the vibe: bracelets, shoes, bags, hats, mittens. In couture today, only so many people can buy it. So I asked, how do I get the same excitement I had looking at Gaultier where it's everything? It's multiple components, not just a dress. So I thought, how do we do bags of couture, jewelry of couture? For jewelry, I wanted to use technology, powder coating on enamel onto aluminum, and then use found objects or precious things like meteorites from Argentina mounted on carbonized silver. Also Roman cameos and portrait miniatures recombined. If you're going to buy couture jewelry, it should have a story. I had never touched a meteorite; here we are using it. It has a talking point, curiosity, and it's still precious. But also bags split into two parts: one about upcycling in a couture way, reusing raw material, and the other looking at 18th or 16th-century French fabrics found, where each bag comes with the history of that fabric, the mill, the loom. So each bag has a provenance. For shoes, I wanted a completely new last from scratch, spending six months to get that curved heel. I've always been obsessed with Roger Vivier's angled shoe. I wondered, what if the entire back of the shoe is a heel? So someone could buy a couture shoe or a piece of jewelry or an upcycled bag. That allows entry into couture at different levels. I thought about how I as a guy would want a nice bracelet. It's about eccentricities and nuance within couture.
Another big change you're making is with the interaction with clients. How much did you think about the couture client? Did you meet anybody?
I went and met some of the biggest clients. I just got back from China and met some more there. I met someone in America. I've been working out who else I want to attract to the brand. It was interesting to think about different types of clients.
Different mindset than I was like, you know, it was really interesting to speak to.
Because they wanted it, it's either they wanted it for occasion.
A specific occasion, yeah.
And they're thinking in advance, like, 'Oh, well I'm going to this thing and I think this would be...' Or you've got people who actually just collect clothing, who are fascinated in the history of fashion and just collect clothing. And then there's newer people who have just started to, like, it's like being part of a world. They go in to do a fitting and they meet the atelier. It's a whole kind of process. The interesting thing in the first week of working here, I went to the atelier and they were remaking dresses from like 1957 or like the first Dior show. I was like, 'Are they for the museum?' No, no. The amazing thing that Dior does is we will remake those dresses for clients. You can order a dress from a show from 20 years ago, 30 years ago.
And we will make it for you still to this day.
Which I, and at the same time we will repair those. So it's...
So is that a bit liberating in a way, because if someone wants that archival thing, you don't have to recreate that?
