Inside Dior's feudal fashion court
A cute and whimsical, but not groundbreaking, debut for Jonathan Anderson at Dior menswear
In this week’s Dark Luxury news round-up
The most interesting thing about Anderson’s Dior menswear debut…
…and the delicious brand that men will actually want to wear
Internal turmoil at LVMH ratchets up a notch
Chanel’s sustainability drive is perhaps not what it seems
Anna Wintour pulls up the drawbridge
Fashion and technology hype is rising again, thanks to AI
A “New Look” for Dior? Yes, but not too new. That was the general gist of Jonathan Anderson’s first chapter at Dior, which began with the unveiling of a much discussed menswear collection in Paris last week. The clothes, while perfectly OK, are of course, in many ways, a sideshow.
The most telling detail and perhaps the most important piece in the show did not float down the catwalk but instead could be found resting on the neck of Dior Couture CEO, Delphine Arnault. In all of the acres of coverage dedicated to the show (it was all about, “18th Century Grunge”) it was Puck fashion journalist Lauren Sherman who noticed a delicate daisy chain necklace said to be designed in collaboration with the jeweller Victoire De Castellane.
A long time collaborator with Dior, Castellane, who had been somewhat sidelined during Maria Grazia Chiuri’s nine-year stint in the top job as creative director, was now right back in the centre of things with this daisy chain necklace. Why? “Returning Castellane — a French aristocrat much admired by the once-middle class Arnaults — into the fold straight away demonstrated Anderson’s ability to not only manage high-altitude corporate politics, but also use them to his advantage”, writes Sherman.
Anderson is as much a courtier as he is a couturier (he’s not really a proper couturier either). After all, what are these publicly listed, yet still family-controlled conglomerates such as LVMH, if not feudal courts? It is now no longer enough to be supremely talented as a designer, these huge brands are looking for what Vanessa Friedman calls “known quantities” and clever corporate operators. “JW understands that LVMH is like the government”, an executive told Sherman. “Top talent come and go, but the permanent bureaucracy is not like the deep state; it cannot be purged like DOGE”.
It has also been suggested that the necklace is part of a pivot towards jewellery and that the piece could be an attempt to create a rival to Van Cleef and Arpels’ bestselling Alhambra bracelet. This makes sense, not only because luxury consumers are cooling on leather goods and getting hot for jewellery, but also because there did not seem to be much going on in terms of bags at the show apart from those Dracula and Liaison Dangereuses literary totes, a bestselling idea leftover from the reign of his predecessor.
The thing about those totes is that there are practically no proprietary design flourishes to be found at all. No custom hardware, a simple, basic shape, and nothing special going on with the material, just cotton canvas - not even leather. It’s just merch. But merch which can be made for next to nothing and sold for thousands, which is what Dior will have to do if they are to hit the target of €14 billion in sales, up from a reported €10 billion today. If you are a trader or investor in luxury stocks, whatever he does next in bags, and now, jewellery, will be the thing to watch.
But what about the verdict on the clothes? Well that ranged from “a decent start but let's wait and see” to “a little basic and boring”. What it most definitely wasn’t was singularly awful and disastrous, like Sabato Di Sarno’s first collection for Gucci, which subsequently cratered the Kering share price. Phew. Perhaps this kind of slow and steady caretaking was the strategy all along for this one.
The days when you could roll the dice on a full creative volte face a la Hedi Slimane with his epoch defining AW01 skinny silhouette for men, or the high drama fantasy and virtuoso cutting of John Galliano are long gone. And who can blame them? The halcyon days of wild creativity which built these empires and which many in the fashion industry yearn for came at a time when the businesses were tiny in comparison to today.
Overall, the tone and timbre was much like a Jonathan Anderson menswear collection: playful gender bending, whimsical androgyny with some “blink and you’ll miss it” sleights of hand, which reference the Dior legacy. Case in point: what looked like cargo shorts in the first look was actually an intricately pleated reference to Dior’s famous “Delft” skirt. Striped shirts, which looked like the kind you could get at the esteemed shirtmaker Charvet (only much nicer, and for less money) in nearby Place Vendôme, had the little wing tip collars normally associated with formal evening wear.
‘Most people will not be buying these clothes. They are merely adverts for the bags’.
Ties branded with the new lower case Dior logo were worn skew-whiff in the manner of little school boys who are into grunge. It was cute and whimsical and nice, but not groundbreaking. Which again, is exactly the point. We forget in fashion-land most people will not be buying these clothes. They are merely adverts for the bags, and now, presumably, the jewellery too. Because surely, no-one is going to drop €200,000 on an overcoat, are they? (Puck)
And the winner is… Dries Van Noten
If you want clothes, actual clothes that you might buy in a shop or a department store (a crazily old fashioned idea) and wear forever and ever, smaller is better. And so it was over at Dries Van Noten, where his protegé, Julian Klausner, sent billowing plumes of silk, bold dashes of colour and pattern with drapey double-breasted jackets worn with shirts undone all the way down. It was delicious and desirable and almost universally applauded, without reservation by most critics, as the show of the season. The same team has been kept in place since the acquisition of a majority stake by Spanish group Puig for a reported €100 million. The result? Happily, Dries is still Dries, yet the collection also felt novel and fresh under Klausner’s direction. (Vogue)
Internal turmoil mounts at LVMH
Some great reporting by Miss Tweed on the internal argy bargy at LVMH where it seems seasoned corporate veterans are at loggerheads with Bernard Arnault’s inexperienced children. According to the report, Dior’s decline started at around the same time as Delphine’s appointment, and right now Dior Couture’s chief communication and image officer, Olivier Bialobos, who has positioned himself as a staunch defender of the Dior legacy, has been accused of meddling with Anderson’s new vision for the brand. Further, Delphine reportedly does not know how to bring harmony to the top team at Dior which is filled with a confusing plethora of warring deputy managers. Meanwhile, her brother Antoine, who is seen as the favorite to succeed Arnault, has been parachuted into Loro Piana, the equivalent of a safe seat at LVMH, and a brand which has defied the luxury downturn by being, you know, luxurious. (Miss Tweed)
Chanel’s Nevold - a scheme to get rid unsold stock?
While pitched as a “sustainability” initiative, is Chanel's “Nevold” simply a way to get rid of unsold stock? According to Glitz Paris, Chanel currently sits on a pile of unsold stock worth up to €3 billion. Sources says that “Nevold” — a contraction of “never” and “old” is a clever ruse to squeeze out a bit of extra income from this unwanted pile of old stuff. Meanwhile, management at Chanel denied these claims and told Glitz Paris, “Nevold reflects the company's desire to position itself as a benchmark player in terms of sustainable innovation, while making a clear distinction between circular economy matters and stock management issues”. (Glitz Paris)
Anna Wintour has left (kind of)
Editor leaves magazine. That is all. Except when it’s not. When it’s Anna Wintour, it's a carefully orchestrated event akin to a monarch abdicating her throne. Just one of many perfectly choreographed set-pieces in a career chock full of them. Will there ever be an editor-in-chief as glamorous, imperially terrifying and influential? No. Not least of all because Wintour has dissolved the title and the new person nominally in charge of American Vogue will be a significantly less glamorous “head of editorial content”. Wintour herself will stay on as “chief content officer”, where she can presumably busy herself “Wintourizing” the rest of Condé Nast’s portfolio. And that’s OK according to Backrow’s Amy Oddell, who wrote the definitive biography of Anna Wintour and the definitive essay about her departure. (The New York Times)
Fashion tech rises again
It’s safe to say that fashion and technology have not been happy bedfellows in the past. First, it was slow to catch on to the e-commerce opportunity and then when it did, vastly overhyped companies like Net-a-Porter, Matches and Farfetch lost billions in value. This week, The Business of Fashion (which did much to hype the Farfetch stock) reports on a new generation of AI-powered startups which promise to change how clothes are made and sold, which has a new generation of investors interested again. (BOF)
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