During December, Jonathan Anderson released images of his Dior Men Pre-Fall 2026 Collection, describing it as “a continuation, an elaboration. A compounding of referencing.”

“The first collection was chapter one,” he said. “I don’t want to run away from it too quickly. This is chapter two. I’m trying to find a new vocabulary for Dior menswear. Reinforcing it, refining it. Every single detail counts. It’s giving importance to small things.”

Models in the Pre-Fall 2026 lookbook include Charlie Tilling-Cole, Edoardo Duse, Elliot Belot, Gilles Vlieghe, Okki Shodimu, Suyong Jung and more. Benjamin Bruno styles the shoot lensed by Peter Joseph Smith [IG]./ Hair by Caroline Schmitt

In reading many reviews on where Jonathan Anderson is taking Dior, this might be the first situation in a very long time where many of us can’t live up to creating dialogue that captures Anderson’s brilliance at Dior.

We just don’t have the right stuff. Our IQs aren’t high enough or we’re too repressed in our thinking. It’s us — not him, and I have no problem admitting that I’m just not in Anderson’s league as a creative design genius.

AOC has been a huge Anderson fan at LOEWE and had no difficulty channeling his maverick mind when a giant fiberglass anthurium grew out of a hole in the floor for his Spring 2023 Ready-to-Wear show. I have two anthuriums blooming gloriously in my bedroom this very moment.

Anderson adapted the plastic-looking anthurium flowers, molding bodices that wrapped around the torso before becoming suggestive-blooms bra cups. These were not your grandmother’s shy-violets adornments.

But this was no Jean Paul Gaultier show for Madonna either, as we came to understand that many LOEWE-loving women were responding to a message different than the one Anderson was promoting.

We were grounded in the eroticism of the flowers, while Anderson was making a comment about the loss of craft and authentic tactility in our modern world. Anne definitely shares that concern with Mr. Anderson, but I still have two anthuriums blooming in my bedroom.

As Vogue Runway’s Nicole Phelps wrote at the time: “for one thing the anthurium’s nubbly spadix looks like nothing so much as an erect phallus; for another the flower is poisonous. The women who will wear these dresses fancy themselves more dangerous than dainty.”

I wrote “There’s a lot of human psychology going on here” about Jonathan Anderson’s anthuriums, after reading the show notes and understanding we had more than one convo going on. Phelps left little ambiguity in her commentary.

I was referring to how we more liberated ladies were loving LOEWE’s designs for ourselves. Simultaneously, we became attentive to Anderson’s own seeming ambivalence about passionate, sensual, erotic women who embrace our physicality along with our spirituality and love for humanity.

Especially coming on the heels of Maria Grazia Chiuri’s full-throated embrace of sensuality and feminism both — and also knowing that a sensual renaissance is in the wind — AOC is trying to live with the new Dior, in order to be fair in our commentary.

I can live without Maria Grazia Chiuri’s Dior, as she’s moved to Fendi and I also love Mathieu Blazy’s Chanel so very much. Add Louise Trotter at Bottega Veneta, Sarah Burton at Givenchy and Nadège Vanhée at Hermès — the sensual women and men who love our impact, have plenty of options without going half-naked in public.

Forgive me, I forgot Haider Ackermann at Tom Ford. Killer! Anthurium-loving women have other houses to embrace.

In that case Dior becomes an intellectual but unemotional exercise for us. We still like the house, even if we’re not passionate about it like before. This is not at all the vibe at Louis Vuitton, so LVMH covers all the bases.

Also, younger people aren’t all that interested in sex these days. Rates of sexual inactivity among young adults [18-29] have roughly doubled in the U.S. from 2010 to 2024, with about a quarter reporting no sex in the past year. I must recap all this research in short order.

So Jonathan Anderson may be on the right track with his more asexual, gender-neutral vision for Dior. It all about math and Dior with LVMH input should have all the data about where we are going.

We will be getting numbers soon . . . only little bits, but information directly from clients will start flowing. That’s all that matters. My own response may be a little blip on the data screen and Jonathan Anderson is indeed burning down Dior to rebuild it in his image — and with great success. ~ Anne