French fashion house Christian Dior held its Cruise 2027 show at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art on Wednesday night, with new creative director Jonathan Anderson presenting his first collection for the house.
Classic automobiles filled the venue as simulated fog drifted across the catwalk. The references running through the collection, cinema, California’s natural landscape, and vintage car culture, were specific and considered.
Dior has staged Cruise collections in Cannes, Marrakech, and Puglia over the years, each city reflecting the creative direction of the house at that time. Los Angeles, a city whose economy and culture are built on image-making, was the location for this edition.
Anya Taylor-Joy, Al Pacino, and Miley Cyrus were seated among the cars, a guest list that reflected the collection’s deep connection to Hollywood’s visual history.
Jonathan Anderson reached into the golden age of film for his references. Models walked in looks evoking Marilyn Monroe, Sophia Loren, and Audrey Hepburn, shimmering and fringed silhouettes, off-the-shoulder cuts, ruffled scarves, and flowers in bloom.
Christian Dior dressed some of Hollywood’s most iconic women during the house’s earliest years, and that connection between the house and cinema has surfaced repeatedly across creative directors. Anderson has returned to it, through nostalgia and geography rather than the feminist and artistic framework that defined Maria Grazia Chiuri’s eight-year run at the house.
Models were styled as actors, directors, and artists, drawing the runway closer to the world of entertainment. Standout pieces included a sparkly red cocktail dress, a shimmering pink trench coat with matching sunglasses, a black-and-grey patterned suit jacket, and a button-down shirt with jeans, each look connected to a recognisable industry archetype.
Menswear in the collection leaned into structure and shadow. Grey wool flannels with geometric shadowing drew from film noir, a genre that shaped Hollywood’s visual identity through the 1940s and 1950s and has remained a consistent reference in menswear for decades.
Several models wore dramatic feathered hats spelling out “Dior” in large stylized lettering. Anderson used comparable gestures at Loewe during his time there, pairing wit with strong craftsmanship, and that approach has carried across to his work at Dior.
A buttercup-yellow dress covered in rosettes began the colour story, with warm yellows and oranges drawn from the California poppy, the state flower, bringing something local and specific to a collection built largely around cinematic imagery.
Jonathan Anderson was named creative director of Christian Dior in 2025, succeeding Maria Grazia Chiuri. He joined Dior from Loewe, where he spent over a decade and grew the Spanish house into one of the most critically regarded names in the industry.
