Jonathan Anderson’s first step into Parisian haute couture is neither a mere exercise in style nor a nostalgic celebration of the past: it is an act of rewriting. Dior couture becomes a landscape to be traversed, and more specifically the garden—mental rather than botanical—is the map chosen for orientation. It is treated not as a romantic, classical ornamental motif, but as a true design principle. Here, nature becomes form, and form becomes construction; from this premise emerges the collection’s title, Grammar of Forms. Contrary to what one might expect, the idea of the flower immediately distances itself from any illustrative romanticism. There are no prints, no decorative surfaces. Vegetation takes shape through volumes, cuts, and the tension of fabrics. Garments open, curve, and layer as if growing around the body, following an internal logic of weight, counterweight, and pause.
Anderson works through subtraction and precision, transforming blooming and blossoming into sartorial architecture. Another element that enriched the designer’s world for the collection is the anthropomorphic work of ceramicist Magdalene Odundo: just as in her ceramics, sinuous lines flow over structured forms, the garments similarly drape gently over the body, enhancing its curves and emphasizing its gestures. Each piece seems to question how far a garment can expand without losing control. The reference to Monsieur Dior’s house in Granville, Normandy—with its gardens overlooking the ocean—is not a literal citation, but a structural suggestion that Anderson followed throughout the entire creative process. It evokes the idea of a place where order and natural force coexist, where the wind shapes as much as the human hand. The collection moves precisely along this line: extreme discipline paired with visual freedom. The show opens with a video that places invisible labor at its center—hands, needle, time. A silent yet powerful introduction that immediately clarifies Anderson’s perspective. Before the result, the process. Before the image, the act of making. It is a statement of intent that runs through the entire collection, conceived as a tightly woven dialogue with Dior’s history, yet never slipping into reverence.
The memories of the maison surface as reflections, never as explicit quotations. Certain proportions recall the emotional impact of Raf Simons’s couture debut, when flowers overtook both garments and space itself. Elsewhere, a more restrained theatricality emerges—distant, yet fully aware of Galliano’s legacy. John Galliano’s presence in the audience is therefore not merely symbolic: it signals an unspoken passing of the torch, a conversation between eras that Anderson deliberately brings into view.
“Couture is kind of like an endangered craft, a kind of mindset, a mythology and making with hand… Dior couture needs to exist because they are practising a skill that if we don’t practise, would disappear.”
The dialogue with the Junon Dress of 1950 is emblematic, as it is dismantled and reassembled through a contemporary lens. The petal skirt multiplies, layers, and overlaps a pair of trousers. It is precisely through these radical gestures that couture ceases to be fragile and becomes mobile, inhabitable. In many silhouettes, an Eastern sensibility emerges: calibrated asymmetries, draping that does not follow the body but encircles it, and geometries that create space rather than fill it. One of the most compelling departures is the introduction of elements traditionally associated with ready-to-wear—such as knitwear—into the couture vocabulary. Not as provocation, but as an expansion of the language itself. Anderson seems to be asking what haute couture can still become.
Accessories complete the narrative with conviction. The bags are not mere accompaniments; they capture the eye and direct it. From the pouch adorned with cascading fringes, almost in perpetual motion, to the soft silk jacquard styles that close like folded cushions, fastened with a single pin. A simple yet powerful gesture that brings everything back to the point of origin: the atelier, the hand, the idea. Anderson does not enter couture on tiptoe, and the garden, in the end, is nothing more than a living space, in constant transformation.
