JONATHAN ANDERSON is now three seasons into his tenure at Dior and the visual decadence that he is bringing to the brand is becoming a clearer, more nuanced language for contemporary menswear and fashion and the way clothes make us feel. His debut collection was a frothy frivolity, an ode to joy as it were. Fast forward to Spring Summer 2027, and Dior is heading to the dance floor

The silhouette that Anderson is making his own during his time at the French Maison is sharpening. If the first two collections were partly about staking claim, this one is about inhabiting the house more freely.

There’s still the deliberate archaeology of archive codes – a trompe l’oeil scarf motif lifted from 1979 haute couture, embroidered onto a striped silk vest; a distressed tweed reworking of the Bar jacket; drop-lapel coats traced back to a Marc Bohan piece Anderson found in the archive – but the layering feels less like scholarship and more like intuition now.

What’s also present, and worth naming, is a thread that runs back further than Anderson’s own arrival.

The curved tailoring, the loose double-breasted two-pieces, the languid, debonair quality of how the jackets fall, with more than a passing echo of the Kim Jones era in the construction of this particular collection.

Jones gave Dior Homme a certain softness of shoulder and a commitment to drape that Anderson seems disinclined to discard entirely. The loucheness that sat beneath Jones’s rigour has been handed off and, in Anderson’s hands, pushed considerably further toward undone.

The show opened with pinstripe and houndstooth suits cut from translucent silk chiffon – the patterns printed rather than woven, the tailoring fully unlined, the whole effect somewhere between soigné and spectral.

(Practical in a Paris June heatwave. Less practical everywhere else, but the point stands.) From there, the collection moved through what Anderson described as a soirée turning into a house party: bow ties askew, denim ripped and then garlanded with fine silver chains, sequinned trousers mimicking the geometry of a five-pocket jean, disco-ball boots.

The accessories did some of the more interesting structural work, much like furniture can transform even the most baroque residence. Crystal pavé sunglasses; ladybirds embroidered in silk satin onto boots; scrolls, leaves and shells transposed from a gentleman’s coat circa 1775 into silver thread. A vintage zig-zag woven blanket turned tote. 

Amid all of it, the tailoring was a familiar Dior landscape.

Loose tuxedos, navy plissé suits, roomy double-breasted coats – pieces that will satisfy the range of men a house like Dior needs to dress, from the red-carpet contingent in Anderson’s front row (Mike Faist, Pharrell Williams, Jimin among them) to the customer who simply wants a jacket that fits well and doesn’t explain itself too loudly.

Anderson has been frank about this dual obligation. “I have to kind of talk to an existing customer, and also recruit new ones,” he said. “There are things in here that my dad could wear, that I could wear.”

But all this in context of its settings.

The location for the show, the Musée Nissim de Camondo, sits near the Parc Monceau on a quiet stretch of the 8th arrondissement, one of those 18th-century grand residences that Paris keeps in elegant, slightly faded reserve. Anderson chose it for his Dior Men SS27 show precisely because it is mid-restoration, in transition, neither the thing it was nor the thing it will become.

“I loved the idea of bringing the new into this historic space. And as we know, Monsieur Dior loved the 18th century,” explained Anderson in post-show notes.

“I like the slightly undone nature of it and how that connects to the collection – there’s this aspect of finding beauty in the imperfect.”

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