8
8
What new artistic direction is Jonathan Anderson taking for his brand?
A few months after a promising debut at Dior, unveiled during the Fall/Winter 2025-2026 Men’s Fashion Week, Jonathan Anderson seems to be taking a new creative turn for his label, JW Anderson. Here’s what you need to know about this new chapter, which has already taken the fashion world by storm.
par Nathan Merchadier.
Published on 10 September 2025. Updated on 8 July 2026.
Jonathan Anderson: a packed schedule for 2025
2025 has been quite eventful for the fashion industry to say the least. With designers’ departures and arrivals at major houses, including Demna at Gucci, Pierpaolo Piccioli at Balenciaga and Matthieu Blazy at Chanel, keeping up was a challenge. In the middle of this whirlwind, the path taken by one of today’s most talked-about designers stands out: Jonathan Anderson.
In February 2025, the Irish designer created the (very) erotic costumes for Luca Guadagnino’s film Queer. A few months later, the announcement of his departure from Loewe came out — one of the crown jewels of the LVMH group — where he had been overseeing all collections since 2013. A separation that leaves a considerable void, given how he revolutionized the Spanish house’s heritage. There, he crafted a universe where fashion, art, and pop culture intermingled without ever tipping into an overly conceptual approach.
A Dior debut between heritage and disruption
The next chapter unfolds in Paris. In April 2025, Dior officially appointed Jonathan Anderson to head both its men’s and women’s collections. His debut show was unveiled barely two months later. Staged behind the Jardin des Invalides, the collection surprised the audience. It offered a beautiful balance between respect for house codes and disruptive moves. The show, widely praised by critics, notably saw the return of the old Dior logo, abandoning the capital letters of the Kim Jones and Maria Grazia Chiuri eras to go back to the oblique ones.
The tireless Irishman first presented his vision for Dior Women’s collections on October 1st, 2025, and then in January 2026 for the couture collection. Jonathan Anderson has already been teasing his inspirations on the red carpet at the Venice Film Festival. This intense pace raises a burning question. How will this insatiable creator manage to reinvent his own design language at JW Anderson, while Dior, the historic giant, seems to demand all the spotlight?
What future for JW Anderson?
Although Jonathan Anderson now wears two hats as Dior creative director and founder of his own label, one question remains… What future does he have in store for JW Anderson, whose last runway show took place in September 2025 ? For now, fashion’s golden boy seems to step away from the catwalk, at least temporarily, and channel his creativity into reinventing the brand’s virtual storefront.
The recent overhaul of the label’s website set the tone. Far more than a conventional e-commerce platform, it now resembles a digital cabinet of curiosities. Each piece is presented as a rare object, removed from the usual logic of consumerism and displayed almost like a work of art. Alongside the collections, one can find design objects, visual capsules that draw on the language of social media, and videos featuring the brand’s “friends of the house” wearing JW Anderson creations, like filmmaker Luca Guadagnino.
For now, this is the only gateway into the world of JW Anderson. Indeed, the brand has no physical stores anywhere in the world, although rumours suggest its London boutique could reopen in time for the next Fashion Week. A radical stance, making the digital space not a secondary sales channel, but the exclusive stage for the brand’s narrative.
A new era without runway shows?
This direction confirms that Jonathan Anderson now prefers to position JW Anderson within a more experimental rhythm. The runway show is no longer the norm, but one of many creative tools. That approach echoes the brand’s show in London in September 2024, where the designer deliberately limited the collection to just five fabrics. The emphasis was placed on cut rather than excess.
As he already said in a 2015 interview with Numéro: “The idea of codes is obsolete, because the public gets bored in 24 hours. Today, you need to entertain people. That’s the challenge every industry is facing.”
One question remains, however… Will JW Anderson become a true laboratory of forms and ideas — as space where the designer can experiment with what a house like Dior would never allow — or will his label be heading toward a more conceptual identity targeting insiders only? One thing is certain, Jonathan Anderson is charting a singular path for the future of his own brand by rethinking fashion as a narrative ecosystem.
