Hi, I'm Jonathan Anderson and we're here in Paris at Dior Heritage, which holds the collection of Christian Dior. And we're here to show you some of my objects of affection.
So, we are just at the front of the building. We have this amazing room where you can get things out from the archive. You have to put these gloves on because everything is very precious. The first piece, obviously, to be really cliche, is the bar jacket.
It really is a kind of pillar of the house of Christian Dior. The first time I saw this piece, I don't know, it's sort of like because you've seen it in so many images, there's two or things that happen. One is sometimes the image is what makes it iconic. And sometimes when you actually see without a human being and it actually becomes kind of a different thing. It's not that it's less magical, it becomes more technical. I think what is great about Dior is that he kind of is a bit of an alchemist because he kind of looks back to be able to reconstruct the future. And I think that's where this piece kind of comes into it. It is really going back into the waistline, which especially when pre-war everything had become softer at that point, in a weird way for me shows this idea of like resilience or like kind of it was nearly like France was back in business or something.
When I do the couture shows, I'm always trying to think of like we have to kind of ignore the value of it because ultimately it's more about the protection of a craft. And so that we then can keep adding to the archive of Dior and at the same time keep this savoir-faire going. I like this idea that it is sort of like a way for me to experiment with how you either go up the body or down the body. In the last cruise show, we went longer with it. In the first show, we went higher with it. We slit the back open. When you do some sort of subtleties in it, it means that it actually can go further than you think. But, at the same time, you can bring it back into its own because it's kind of the most amazing blank canvas.
So, this is the Seagull. As much as I love the bar jacket, this is my favorite dress in history because I think it is so radical the way in which it is cut. On the top, looks how many a kimono is cut where you're cutting on the flat. I've always been obsessed by this sort of front panel. Obviously, I have referred to it to do the Seagull bag because I was very into this idea of how this could be transferred into like a bag structure. I just think there's something about it that I feel that where classicism and modernity can meet together.
Dior is the garden. There is a romance to him. As much as that the thing that I always kind of relate to him with this, I actually think the part that's not really spoken enough about Dior is that I think he was an incredible businessman as a designer. And I think he was very smart looking at how he dealt with Hollywood and how he worked with product placement. He's thinking about that process with Hitchcock and how getting it on the right people was part of the marketing. I think it's in fashion as much as we can get very serious about it.
There comes a point where you want to make sure there's something that kind of lets go of it. You know, when you think of like when Dior did shows in very small salons, and it was smoking, and people were watching 80 looks go by. He would sometimes put a red dress to kind of wake people up. And it's ultimately quite camp when you look back. And I quite like that part because it's sort of we don't live in that world anymore. But, at the same time, there is something deeply romantic about it.
We are here to look at probably one of Dior's most incredible dresses, which is the Juno. It has to lay down like this because it can't actually go on a mannequin anymore because of its age and the way in which it is made.
And there it is. Even just looking at it now with you guys, it's sort of like it is such a magical dress. I think when designers really good and when it captures the moment of its time, it's hard to beat. But yeah, she's having to lie flat because she's not very well. She's been worn and probably worn and had a lot of fun in. And you can see here that it's starting to disintegrate a bit. But that's what's so important about Dior heritage is that you know, we have this amazing team of people who are protecting these pieces.
It's probably the most important part of Dior because there is not many brands that have history like this. After the Second World War, the world goes through one of the probably the most traumatic moments in modern-day history. But it is a change of the aristocracy of that period. The British were the kind of pioneers of the aristocracy at that moment. They had made a lot of money through the Industrial Revolution. The war happens, which ravages Europe, and then we have the birth of America and the new aristocracy. So you've got Getty and Rockefeller.
What is interesting about this is that the person going after it during that period, it was about occasion. We had occasions to go to. Wealth and the idea of celebration changes. It becomes the volume turns up. In previous jobs, I wasn't you know, I didn't do huge amounts of embellishment. When you look at the history of Dior and you look at other designers in it, the embroidery that we can do is amazing. And it actually becomes quite addictive because the people that do it are incredibly addictive. They want to prove that they can make anything.
My next object is this incredible puffer jacket by John Galliano for Christian Dior. It was actually one of the first pieces, a group of pieces that I asked the archive to see when I joined. John is just fantastic of how he reimagines things. And I think what is interesting is that the pockets are very Dior. It is something that for me that has the kind of essence of like new and old world meeting in it. And I think this is very, very hard to do. And that's why John is a master. And you know, when you first join a house and you have someone like John Galliano before, it's very, very daunting. But, you know, there I think there's so much to learn in a piece like this.
John is like looking out here as you look at people like Poiret, where they are looking to the East in terms of like how people are dressing. And I think it creates such like kind of like couture utilitarianism. So, it's a dream piece. I think it's something that I would wear myself. I think I would wear this walking to work with jeans and a pair of boots. I think there's something about this piece that just gives such attitude. You know, it's stood the test of time. I think it's still incredibly relevant and modern.
This jacket by John could be styled with a Juno. And it could be such a look with a pair of Converse, for example, and it would look great. And at the same time, they can go on mannequins around the world into museums and we see them as pieces. And that's what's great about Dior as a brand. It is like it's like great cinema. It has everything in it, ups and downs. It has had multiple cast and crew. It reinvents itself. There's not many brands that can do that.
So, the next object I'm going to show you is the book to press, which is for the very first show of Christian Dior. I've actually never touched this one. I always love inside the rooms. I wish fashion was like this today because there is such kind of like revealer and spectacle about fashion. We somehow lost that a bit. And you can see how close people got to clothing and how people dressed for it.
What is interesting is in the building you have the cabin, which you can kind of see here. It's incredibly small where the models got changed. And it's actually way smaller than you think. It makes the backstages at a fashion show look completely obnoxious. The show was 95 looks. It was probably an hour and a half long. I can barely get guests to stay for 15 minutes without racing out.
I think on the morning of the show I think Dior was a very emotional person, but I think you know this is the birth of a brand that did not exist. And I think there was a lot of pressure ultimately to kind of make it work. I think every first show is emotional because ultimately you're trying to kind of birth out a kind of concept and idea of where you want to go. And it's quite nice doing this today because it's a nice reminder to come back to the archive and sort of realize what is the mission.
We are now in the accessories archive, which is kind of like one of the most beautiful stores that we have. Shoes, hats, jewelry, and many other things.
We have this amazing shoe, which is by Roger Vivier. I like a statement shoe. For me Dior Vivier created some of the greatest shoes in history. They're kind of like sculptural themselves. And why I picked this one is ultimately lily of the valley is something we all know that is synonymous with Dior. The great thing is that Dior is very superstitious. I'm incredibly superstitious, sometimes to the point where it's ridiculous. That's what I quite like with Dior is he has these little motives, you know, when you look at some early shoes or you look at the jewelry and things, you have the ladybird, which is always another symbol of good luck. And like, you know, you have the lily of the valley, you have the little star that we sometimes sneak into different things on the bottoms of shoes. You know, I think it's something that is sort of storytelling and it gives a bit of poetry.
The great thing about superstition is that it kind of has carried through the history of Dior somehow. And I quite like that because there is something kind of humanizing in Dior himself because he have that. And I think we all have like things that we think are good luck or not good luck. Mine are all about magpies. If I see magpies, if I see two, it's fine. If I don't, I have to see one, I have to like salute it. Definitely do not go underneath a ladder. Mirrors breaking is the worst. And then sometimes, for example, if I have a bad thought, I will like knock my head. That was from my grandmother yesterday.
We are here in the library and I wanted to quickly show you this book, which is Dior by Dior. And I think this goes back to this idea as much as we see Dior as the sort of designer, he was a very smart marketeer and very smart at telling his story. Actually, you really you realize that like it's kind of funny, Dior. And at the same time, he understands telling the story of himself. And he's aware, I think, is one of the most interesting things about Dior, of his place in time. You know, you realize that he is human and you realize that he sees the world in a very different way that we do. There is a romance to him that, you know, he's like a Jackie Collins novel, but not.
So, I wanted to show you in here. This is a coat that I really love. It's called the Arizona. As you can see, these are like the pockets that John had referenced on the jacket that we had just saw earlier. And it's in this amazing red. And it's something I've been kind of like playing with a bit recently to try to see if how I could reinterpret this for couture. And it's kind of timeless coat. I could wear this one too with jeans, I think. Kind of works.
This is an amazing piece. You can see the puffer in it. And once again, you see how he reverts to this button a lot which we had saw in the bar jackets. This is one year after. And then he's going to pop it back in.
In this space, we have all these kind of amazing kind of like they roll through which you can get in libraries. We're now just heading down to see how Dior did the kind of planary of collection. And it just shows you how he kind of attribute the kind of looks. So, they you have the sketches here. You then have all the fabric allocation here. This is such a kind of like meticulous way of working out everything in the collection which you're kind of seeing it the coloration, the volume.
And as you see here, you know, which Dior really reverts to a lot to is this idea of kind of black and white. He uses a lot of like pitbull grisaille and a lot of phi. You know, he kind of continues to use this sort of like phi structure. And then if you look here, you can then see you have all the different types of embroideries, the print. And it's nice because it's sort of like really good for us to then go back into this we can actually see exactly the fabrics. And a lot of the shows that we had been doing now since the very beginning is really going back in and recreating fabrics or twisting fabrics or using different materials.
Going back to this idea, there was a reverie in fashion and I think there was a process which was slower and at the same time I think there was a preciousness to it. It's kind of magic. Like it's you know, this is these are his sketches and the team here that we have are so dedicated. We're very lucky that it's being preserved ultimately. So that anyone can then see it in the future.
Well, thank you very much guys for coming to the Dior archives and Dior heritage and for following me around and seeing all my objects of affection.
