Cruise collections are usually sold as a fantasy of escape: the faraway destination, the perfect suitcase, the woman breezing beautifully through some glamorous, far-flung place in silk scarves and woven bags. Jonathan Anderson’s Dior show at LACMA imagined a much more interesting woman: the one who comes to Los Angeles to become someone.
L.A. has always belonged to that person. The aspiring actress showing up to casting calls with impossible optimism. The writer convinced she has the next great script in her tote. The woman reinventing herself after a breakup, a burnout, or both. It's the city that helped turn Norma Jeane into Marilyn Monroe; where Joan Didion and Eve Babitz built entire aesthetics around women in various states of glamour, ambition, and mourning; where countless newcomers have arrived hoping to become stars, or at least leave as someone different than they were when they got there.
The show's West Hollywood setting at LACMA helped sell the dream. The concrete architecture looked cinematic against the setting sun, with palm trees swaying in the background and vintage cars parked everywhere like props on a studio backlot. Even the show notes read less like traditional collection notes than the opening pages of a movie script. Before a single look came down the runway, Anderson had already made the point: this is not just resort dressing.
Anderson has never treated fashion as just clothes. His collections tend to pull from art, objects, craft, and odd little cultural references. Here, the show notes’ references—American pop artist Ed Ruscha, with whom the designer collaborated on shirting; old Hollywood actresses; California poppies; Christian Dior’s idea of “the dream”—felt like pieces of the same plot. It also feels like a clever evolution for Dior, a house that has always understood fantasy, just usually in a much more polished register. Anderson’s version is looser, stranger, and a little more fun.
His Dior has been building toward this. Across his first collections for the house, the most compelling ideas have often come through the details: a strange proportion, an unexpected fabric mix, a historical reference made to feel a little less precious. At LACMA, those details did the work of character-building, from the red dress Anderson noted Christian Dior liked to place partway through a collection “to wake people up” to a reworking of the signature Saddle bag, slung low and cool.
There were vintage-looking furs, ruffle collars with a whiff of Jimi Hendrix, bug-eye sunglasses, and shearling-lined coats that looked straight out of an Almost Famous after-party, which gave the collection a dose of old Hollywood excess rather than the usual resort archetype. Texture was everywhere—shearling, chiffon, sequins—but it never felt overworked. The effect was less “woman on holiday” than “woman in the middle of her second act.”
Even the beauty look followed suit. Makeup artist Peter Philips skipped the usual overt “vacation glow” playbook in favor of something more cinematic: luminous skin, softly defined eyes, natural waves with a faint surfer bend, and, on some models, crystal-lined lashlines that felt more old Hollywood starlet than beach getaway. Even the nails got character treatment, from tortoiseshell finishes that matched the clutches to Anderson’s revival of Dior’s famous newspaper print.
The front row got the memo, too. Sabrina Carpenter, Anya Taylor-Joy, and Miley Cyrus are not exactly women known for staying in one lane. Carpenter has made the jump from Disney alum to pop-world sensation. Taylor-Joy turned her slightly uncanny screen presence into one of fashion’s most reliable red carpet formulas. Cyrus went from Hannah Montana to Grammy-winning rock-pop force, with a wardrobe that seems to evolve as often as the music. In other words, they weren’t just famous people courted by the house. They were proof of concept.
That is what makes Anderson’s Dior feel interesting right now. Luxury fashion has spent the past several years making women look expensive, tasteful, and a little anonymous. Anderson seems to be pushing toward something more specific: women who look like they chose the clothes for a reason, not just well-dressed placeholders.
And that may be the bigger takeaway from L.A. The fantasy is no longer just where the Dior woman is going. It’s becoming the woman everyone is watching when she gets there.
