With those lining the front row including Anna Wintour, John Galliano and Rihanna, it is but one sign Dior is on track to success with their new creative director.
The pinnacle of fashion, art and craftsmanship, it is the couture collection experts look to for evidence of a creative director’s talent.
While Anderson may have shown appealing hints of weaving together the past, present and future with his recent men’s and womenswear collections, his couture presentation looked to have cemented his place in the French fashion house’s history.
“When you copy nature, you always learn something,” read the show notes for Christian Dior Couture Spring/Summer 2026, with the house describing the new collection as a ‘Wunderkammer of artefact and nature’.
‘Wunderkammer is German for ‘room of wonder’ and in the past has referred to a cabinet of curiosities, historically used to display precious found items from nature, alongside works of art and artifacts worthy of display.
With elements in each garment – and even the setting, strewn with cyclamens – drawing from nature, it is easy to see the parallels.
Floral embellishment appeared on many garments in literal form and in more suggested shapes, such as the fluttering edges of layered mini-dresses.
But it was the exaggerated, bell-shaped hem forms in gathered silk that bought the drama required of couture. Each dress in the series recalls a ceramic vase-shape, something that might also be found in that display cabinet. In fact, those bulbous shapes had been inspired by sculptural vessels by Kenyan-born British ceramicist Magdalene Odundo, another hint at Anderson’s love of craft.
Of course icons of the house were present in the form of tailoring and sumptuous texture. There was also plenty of covetable colourful and surprising accessories – we loved the pillowy totes and peanut-shaped clutches – as the designer brings together his disparate ideas to create a desirable world of Dior once more.
See the collection:
Photos / Dior
