For his debut at Dior, Jonathan Anderson worked with prolific textile artist Sheila Hicks to reimagine the house’s epochal Lady Dior bag with texture, utility, movement, and fun. The bags, which were shown draped over shoulders or tucked under arms, their tassel details bouncing down the runway, signal that Anderson’s love of craft and collaboration continue beyond his tenure at Loewe and onto his mantle at Dior. Hicks has long been a font of inspiration for the fashion world, a fact that she’s well aware of. “Every year, there’s one of them,” she once told The New Yorker of designers who cite her. Anderson, whom Hicks describes as an “art enthusiast and collector,” was ultimately drawn to Hicks’s ponytail motif—one she first exhibited in 1969. Over the course of three months, the pair “refined the arrangement and integration of the ponytails into the Lady Dior, even rethinking its interior…reflecting Sheila’s attention to both aesthetics and function,” Anderson said. How does this relate to Hicks’s work at large? “It’s inextricably linked,” she said. The result is a creation emblematic of the shared values between Dior and Hicks, which are, according to Anderson, “a deep curiosity for material and form, a reverence for craftsmanship, and an avant-garde spirit grounded in historical knowledge.”
Dior Men’s bag, price upon request. (dior.com)
Connecting Threads
1928 Christian Dior cofounds an art gallery that displays works by Picasso.
1947 Dior holds his first fashion show in Paris.
1957 Sheila Hicks receives her BFA from Yale and a Fulbright grant to study ancient Andean weaving.
1958 After Dior’s death, Yves Saint Laurent shows his first collection as creative director.
1960 MoMA is the first muse- um to acquire one of Hicks’s works.
1984 Jonathan Anderson is born in Northern Ireland.
1995 French first lady Bernadette Chirac gifts Princess Diana an unreleased Dior Chouchou bag. She carries it so often, Dior renames it Lady Dior after her.
2005 Anderson graduates from the London College of Fashion.
2008 Anderson launches JW Anderson and begins his art collection with a John Ward piece.
2010 “Sheila Hicks: 50 Years,” a retrospective, opens at the Addison Gallery of American Art.
2013 Loewe hires Anderson as creative director.
2017 Anderson inaugurates the Loewe Craft Prize.
2022 Hicks receives the Légion d’honneur.
2025 Anderson is appointed the first creative director of men’s, women’s, and couture at Dior since Christian Dior himself.
2025 Anderson and Hicks collaborate on this purse, featured in his debut show.
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