Dior Redefines 'Cafe Society' for Fall 2026 As Anne Says 'Not So Fast, Johnny Boy'
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To appreciate the Dior Fall 2026 Collection Campaign by Jonathan Anderson, you simply must watch the video. It lightens the soft girl-talk mood of the images with raw, unfiltered energy generated by models Laura Kaiser, Mona Tougaard as headliner, Paul Lasfargues, Sunday Rose and Zhao Ziqi.
Named ‘Cafe Society’, the campaign is styled by Benjamin Bruno with photography by David Sims [IG], who also acts as director./ Hair by Paul Hanlon; makeup by Yadim
Paris Café Society Embraced Bad-Ass Women, Not Our Erasure
AOC knows that it annoys the hell out of Jonathan Anderson that women like Anne keep reminding him about the facts of history in his House of Dior. He complains that we are “boxing him in”. Not really, because it’s not about him. It’s about our erasure from Dior’s history and the expectation that we will just fall in line with his alleged, Sun King genius that calls for such action.
Don’t you think there’s a subliminal message in dropping the reality of Catherine Dior and her work with the French resistance which Chiuri honored. Anne does. The real Cafe Society heroines were true-grit women. Taking a well-established historical term and innocently [or not] trading it for these lovelies enjoying giggles and milkshakes is exactly how erasure works.
Nationalism Exists Worldwide: Go For It Dior
French nationalism is banging on the doors of French voters as the white nationalists in America are determined to take down all the progress made by women and people of color, along with legions of immigrants who call America home.
Because AOC considers the challenges at Dior to be far more serious than LVMH wants to admit, we will be making a serious pitch in the coming days that nationalists have big bank accounts, too. Jonathan Anderson’s book lists and curiosity-cabinet approach to design have convinced AOC that Anderson’s Dior is in a position to make a serious pitch to the nationalists as ‘their’ favorite brand.
Trust us. This is a brilliant strategy on Anne’s part and she made far more money for Victoria’s Secret than Anderson has ever made for LVMH in a 10-year period. Operating on a base 6x as large as Loewe when she left, she also started small. Her sustained annual growth multiplier is 25%, with Anderson’s at 13% for Loewe. Anne’s executive responsibilities in creating the first product development group, followed by the first design studio in the Wexner empire are very similar to Anderson’s. Proudly, AOC admits that it was a far more democratic enterprise than Loewe or Dior. We didn’t believe in Sun Kings and Anne never fancied herself as royalty. She would have been cut down to size on the spot.
Whatever financial performance Anderson wants to claim as a co-CEO type [as Puck’s Lauren Sherman calls him], Anne did far better. And she began her VS tenure with an American financial collapse far more serious than the present moment.
Paris Café Society & The WW2 Fashion Resistance
It’s a well-established fact that Paris was vastly more integrated and racially progressive than New York City during the interwar era. While New York forced Black Americans to fight for basic seating rights, Paris embraced them. Black musicians, intellectuals and artists like Josephine Baker and Langston Hughes fled American Jim Crow laws for Paris, where they were celebrated as avant-garde cultural icons in the cafés of Montparnasse.
An equal — if not more interesting — story was going on among many high-society French women who not only enjoyed jazz and the intellectual energy stimulated by the exodus to Paris of American creatives of color. High-society French women played a massive, dangerous role in espionage, using the superficiality of ‘Café Society’ culture as a literal shield to disguise their subversive activities against the rise of the Nazis.
The Subversive DNA in the House of Dior
Among the women leading the charge against the Nazis was Catherine Dior. AOC has written about the founder’s sister before. But lest her memory die in a sea of froth and giggles, it’s time for a reminder about Catherine’s ‘true grit’ backbone and also the nerves of steel, fearless Cafe Society French women possessed as operatives for the French resistance.
While Christian Dior was designing clothes in occupied Paris, Catherine was a core operative for the Franco-Polish ‘F2’ Resistance network.
Catherine used the precise assumptions the Nazi occupiers made about French women to outsmart them. Because the Germans viewed young, chic women as frivolous ornaments, Catherine was able to transport highly sensitive military intelligence across Europe completely unsuspected.
Catherine Dior’s Cafe Society Plan to Undermine the Nazis
The Setup: Elite Paris restaurants and couture houses [including the salons of designers who stayed open during the Nazi occupation] were frequented by high-ranking German officers and clueless collaborators.
The Lounge Network: Resistance operatives recognized that the women's powder rooms and lounges were the only spaces entirely free from male German surveillance.
The Secret Pockets: Wealthy society women, many of them Dior clients inspired by Catherine and also working for the Underground, would enter these lounges under the guise of fixing their makeup or needing their elaborate dresses adjusted. The restroom attendants, maids, and seamstresses—who were actually high-level Resistance couriers—would step in to help.
The Hand-Off: While "repositioning" a corset, zipper, or hemline, the women would pass stolen Nazi movement blueprints, cash, and encoded messages. Couriers would sew updated instructions directly into hidden secret pockets or the structured linings of the haute couture gowns. The women would then walk right back out to their dinner tables, completely unsuspected because the Nazis viewed them merely as vapid, wealthy socialites.
Catherine Dior was arrested and tortured by the Gestapo on July 6, 1944. She was deported on August 15, 1944 to the Ravensbrück women’s concentration camp. She survived forced labor, starvation, and a death march before being freed by Allied forces in April 1945.
In Praise of Dior’s Original Bad-Ass Women Now Gone From View
There’s a note of irony present, as AOC recalls the exact moment in 2024 that Anne learned the story of Boy Capel and Coco Chanel. Tonight we expand the lens of Catherine Dior’s life with her meeting founding Resistence member Hervé des Charbonneries while shopping in Cannes in November 1941. Did we forget this fact and wrote about it several years ago? Into the archives we go.
A married man with three children, Dior fell in love with Hervé des Charbonneries and joined him in the Resistence in late 1941. The reports AOC is reading open up a new question about Christian Dior himself. Did he know that his sister used his apartment at 10 Rue Royale to host underground Resistance meetings. How could he not have known?
Anne admits to falling asleep more than once trying to watch the recent biography of Christian Dior on Apple TV. Perhaps all fashion people know this fact the Dior himself sheltered his sister but AOC.
The answer is ‘yes’. Though Christian Dior himself was not a resistance fighter and had to tread carefully under the German occupation of Paris, he sheltered his sister Catherine and her comrades, fully aware of the severe danger it put them all in.
A French Nationalist Flag on the Field
This new information about Christian Dior’s support for Catherine and her Resistance friends may shoot a big hole in Anne’s vision of Jonathan Anderson’s Dior embracing French nationalism. She is thinking about this new information.
All the tech bros can line up to support the Dior brand from Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez Bezos to Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan. It’s about Jared Kuchner and Ivanka Trump. Okay, they have some baggage in this moment trying to take over that island in Albania but still . . .
This strategic idea is not about the Nazis. It’s about the nationalists and in most cases they are white nationalists, when they are free to speak on a yacht in the Mediterranean where no one will hear them. They are also very smart, deeply informed and engaged people. Captains of business.
In Anne’s mind, she has Dior hosting global summits on Guaranteed National Incomes — which even Jeff Bezos does believe in, especially with the advent of AI. Dior could be the TED Talks brand of the uber-wealthy.
Think about it. Anderson is peddling Clockwork Orange book totes — calling it art — and Anne is on Ted Talks. Davos II Summers. Aspen in Provence.
Delphine to the Rescue: Well, Maybe
The Chanel Top-Speed Train: Chanel is running all over Dior from what we know, and it will only get worse. Delphine may well be required to address financial analysts over second quarter results. And she had better prepare and practice her answers better than her recent appearance at the Financial Times event. For her English to be worse than Anne’s French is not acceptable. Delphine looked and sounded really rattled.
Major Delivery Issues on Anderson’s Products: Many of us now know that empty shelves on Anderson’s new designs were not sold out at all, as suggested by Bernard Arnault himself. The products were never delivered, due to production challenges.
Delusional Vision Around a Love Affair Timeline with Anderson: AOC has done extensive research on Jonathan Anderson’s narrative that he has years to figure out his vision of Dior, and it takes years to establish an emotional relationship with a luxury brand. Both he and Delphine are delusional if they think that door has not largely closed on a personal level — Anderson and the VICs.
They need to release their research on Anderson’s assertion that it takes years for a very good customer to embrace a true relationship with a brand. AOC has piles of research that this assertion is false; we will be sharing our research.
Throwing Chiuri Lovers Overboard: Why they had to throw the Chiuri lovers overboard will become a Harvard Business School investigation. Consider the fact that Chiuri is back to sewing clandestine messages into her Fendi-designed clothes. Bravo Maria Grazia! We love bad-ass women.
Note also that Chanel CEO Leena Nair has increased Chanel’s annual commitment to women and girls from $20 million to $100 million. AOC would love to watch Leena Nair and Delphine Arnault discuss the place of feminism and women’s issues in their brands. Delphine jumped ship and Leena Nair is all in. What a contrast between these two leaders.
For today, AOC just dropped a question in the hopper for further investigation: “In history, what are the upsides and the downsides to French nationalism?” Stay tuned. Anne has a lot to say and she has lived this Dior-Chanel narrative since last October 2025. To be honest, Anne could write a book on the subject.
