After months of speculation around his future post-Loewe, Jonathan Anderson was announced as the artistic director of its LVMH stablemate Dior Men on Thursday. While many expect him to eventually helm both the men’s and womenswear businesses at Dior, for now, he’s well placed to drive the future of menswear from one of the market’s most coveted roles, following the departure of Kim Jones in January.
Anderson has a strong track record in menswear, having launched his eponymous label JW Anderson as a menswear brand in 2008 before adding womenswear two years later. “Menswear, and its redefinition, is the foundation of Jonathan’s design practice,” says Vogue Runway’s Luke Leitch. “When he started back in 2008, JW Anderson’s collections were often bold and sometimes quite rough-edged challenges to gender norms in fashion. I think his legacy (so far) in the menswear space is that the ideas that first seemed avant-garde when he expressed them have since found a wide social currency.”
At Loewe, Anderson turned a once inconsequential menswear business into a burgeoning brand. His collections, with far-reaching references from the emergence of the metaverse to artist Richard Hawkins, helped usher in a playful menswear mood over the last five years. Coupled with a heady network of buzzy young ambassadors like Josh O’Connor, Drew Starkey and Kit Connor, viral unisex accessory the Puzzle bag, and cultural touchpoints like Challengers, the brand reached the level of influence usually reserved for luxury’s biggest players.
As he takes on a new challenge at one such player, what can we expect?
Re-invention and a sense of fun
Menswear may represent a relatively small portion of its overall business, but Dior is one of LVMH’s most storied flagship brands. While lesser-known Loewe was in many ways a clean slate upon Anderson’s arrival, he has a deep brand heritage to grapple with this time around. And as LVMH meets continued headwinds amid the luxury slowdown and US tariffs — with Dior performing “below average”, per the group’s latest earnings — leadership will be keen for reinvigoration.
At Loewe, Jonathan wasn’t particularly beholden to the archives. He could think of it as a “cultural brand” that responded to the art, film and music worlds rather than its own past, says Samuel Hine, global fashion correspondent at GQ. “The Dior archives contain some of the most significant pieces of fashion history; these were a consistent starting point for Jones’s collections. I’m guessing Jonathan will think more like Hedi Slimane, who embraced Christian Dior’s spirit of modernity, rather than his actual design references,” adds Hine. (Slimane was the creative director of Dior Men from 2000-2007.)
“Anderson pressed reset on Loewe and he’ll do the same at Dior Men,” predicts brand strategist and creative consultant Richard Gray. “He’s already re-invigorated one [LVMH house]. At Dior Men, I expect he’ll not only rewrite the playbook but also come up with an entirely new language to boot. The man works on horsepower.”
At Loewe, we saw Anderson reference heritage, regularly harkening back to its leather goods roots by manipulating leather in many different ways — from trompe l oeil fabric to surrealist interpretations of leather, says fashion commentator Odunayo (Ayo) Ojo, or Fashion Roadman. “I think he will reference the heritage of Dior, but at the same time, he will infuse his fun, witty and intellectual sensibilities into the brand. I wonder if he will find interesting ways of making womenswear silhouettes from the archive (like the Bar Suit) suitable for menswear. It will be a lot more playful than anything we’ve ever seen before.”
“It wouldn’t surprise me if [Dior Men] becomes a little more abstract,” says Zak Maoui, style director at Gentleman’s Journal. “Jonathan always said he wanted to make clothes that had humour attached to them. Take, for instance, the high-waisted jeans and elongated footwear of his recent men’s collections at Loewe — wearable, but totally playful. I expect we will see more of those everyday items given a humorous touch and a Dior monogram stamp.”
The new menswear context
The menswear market is ripe for evolution. Men’s fashion has evolved in recent years, as streetwear growth slowed and many men’s consumers shifted spend from logos, sneakers and grails to high-quality, design-led pieces with a focus on artisanship or technical performance. While the menswear market remains much smaller than womenswear, when it comes to growth, men’s luxury fashion is outpacing women’s in some segments, including luxury bags and leather goods as well as clothing and footwear, says Fflur Roberts, head of luxury goods at data analytics company Euromonitor International. “Much of this is being driven by the young, affluent male cohorts (millennials and Gen Z males) who are more fashion-conscious and brand-aware than previous generations. They’re also more willing to experiment with styles and invest in luxury goods.”
Anderson’s approach to craft, honed at Loewe, aligns well with the current menswear consumer, and may set him up to drive sales with today’s value-sceptical consumer. His strong take on accessories and footwear is also expected to drive results at Dior Men. Everyone interviewed for this story suggested he’ll be keen to replicate the Loewe Puzzle bag’s success. “It was one of the standout pieces he made for Loewe,” Maoui says. “I would love for him to create a new It-bag for men, which we’re seriously lacking.”
Ojo echoes the sentiment. “Dior is itching for new bag designs that really sell, especially for men. I believe [Anderson] can capitalise on this. He is also good at capitalising on social media trends and moments like the Loewe Tomato, there might be a lot of scope to do that at Dior and build further interest in the brand.”
Dior Men has a much broader and deeper collection than Anderson’s worked with before and will require him to hone in on new categories like occasionwear, which is big business for the house, experts agree. “Occasionwear is one of the many exceptional things that Kim Jones did at Dior Men,” Gray says. “So, it would be a challenge for any designer, even somebody of Jonathan Anderson’s calibre, to take the reins at Dior, post Kim. But, I think we all recognise that Anderson is the talent who can.”
A “left-field” brand universe?
At both his own brand and Loewe, Anderson created an ecosystem of collaborators and talents that developed a compelling brand universe. For example, his costume direction for Luca Guadagnino’s Challengers, including the Loewe “I Told Ya” T-shirt — sold after the film’s release — meant the brand benefited from the virality of the press tour, and aligned the label with the film’s powerful stars. From the annual Loewe Craft Prize, which Anderson launched in 2016 to celebrate artisanal talents, to his viral campaigns across men’s and womenswear, industry insiders look forward to his Dior Men world.
“Over the last nearly 20 years, Anderson has become a super-seasoned manager as well as creative director and designer,” says Leitch. “He is relentless in terms of efficiency, planning ahead, considering the market and the wider world — these are all facets of his process that serve the design. I think he’ll adapt to Dior very smoothly, and I suspect that Dior will also have to adapt to him. I’m sure he will continue to work with artists, movie makers, craftspeople — the whole spectrum of creatives.”
“In the luxury menswear market right now, incredible product is not necessarily enough,” Gray says. “Product now needs a story, and one that is more than just ‘another reason to buy’. Storytelling isn’t just great social media captions. When it’s done best, it manages to repurpose contemporary culture in a way that disrupts and then informs modern design. Consider Loewe’s deft handling of the Studio Ghibli accessories collab [featuring graphics from Spirited Away and Howl’s Moving Castle]. That’s the Anderson luxury-playbook in action, right there.”
What Jonathan did so well at Loewe was that he created a universe that was instantly recognisable as that of the brand, adds Maoui. “Whether that’s through its clever use of ambassadors, from Josh O’Connor to Ayo Edebiri, to more left-field, head-turning choices such as the late Maggie Smith (genius!) and Daniel Craig, or through the exhibitions like [the recent, Tokyo-based] ‘Crafted World’,” Maoui says. “I think we will see more of this with Dior, and he will want to create his own Dior universe with left-field ambassadors. Right now, the Dior universe can feel a little flat, with the same faces on rotation.”
He’ll also have more scope to innovate, Ojo adds. “The budgets will be bigger and the resources greater. It may take a while adjusting to working with a larger team, but Anderson is so experienced at this point, I don’t personally think he will encounter many issues. No lights are too bright.”
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