How Jonathan Anderson Defined Menswear’s New Look

“I kind of like having them around because I find them sort of conceptual,” Anderson muses, running his hands over a purple moiré silk vest that he estimates would have been sold back then for about what a Ferrari costs today. “They’re just, like, radical pieces of clothing for men.” They remind him, he says, “that we think we are radical in our period. But are we?”

Christian Dior made his lasting mark on fashion with his very first collection. Presented in 1947, Dior’s full, pleated skirts and sculpted jackets—which came to be known as the New Look—defied the strictness of fabric rationing that defined womenswear during wartime in Europe. Shown less than 18 months after the end of World War II, it was a reset of almost incomprehensible boldness, a return to femininity and romance and pleasure in clothing. Which is all to say, it is in the house DNA to strive to lead sartorial revolutions during times of change.

Anderson has been keeping this history in the back of his mind. “In a weird way, the brand is big enough to suddenly be like: ‘Ties are back,’” he says. To make huge statements that everyone can’t help but follow. “Because [Christian] Dior was about: We’re going to [change] the skirt. It was, like, the simple act. So in a weird way you’re kind of going: Yes, there’s loads of people who do ties, but we’re going to put it into focus.”

Anderson almost always prefaces his ideas and observations with “in a weird way.” At Loewe, journalists in his postshow confabs seemed conditioned to lean in closer every time he dropped the phrase, because “in a weird way…” indicated that he was turning an idea over to examine it from an unexpected angle. (In his office, he says the phrase 24 times in less than an hour.)

So, did you decide that ties are back? I ask.

“Yeah,” he replies, “because I hate ties, and I hate suits, and I’m in a brand that’s all about tailoring. So I was trying to work out, how would you get there and make it, like, appealing?”

It’s nearing 5:30 p.m., and as Anderson sits down at a long marbletop table, an attendant dashes in to replace his delicate ceramic cup with a fresh coffee. He’s got a navy terry jumper pulled over a gray polo shirt, along with his signature slim vintage Levi’s and On trainers. As we talk, he alternates between fidgeting with a binder clip, a pen, and a pack of cigarettes. “It’s been one of those days,” he says, looking exhausted, “where I’ve had 20 things to do, and they’re all different things.”

In his historic role, Anderson is responsible for 10 collections annually, including, in a first for him, haute couture. He’ll likely do a half dozen shows a year. But he also has to oversee campaigns, marketing, and the wrapping paper that goes in your Dior shoebox, the design of which is also, technically, his remit. You can see why nobody has done it all before. Anderson won’t divulge exactly when and where he was last year when Dior CEO and LVMH scion Delphine Arnault called him about the job. What he’ll say is that he was on holiday. And that, somewhat astonishingly given its stature, the thought of going to Dior had never crossed his mind. “It came out of nowhere,” he says with a raised eyebrow and a shrug.