'Dior is back:' Menswear turns a corner in Paris as Jonathan Anderson hones his vision

PARIS — Dior 's menswear show arrived with a stripped-back set and a loud signal of confidence: neon-yellow wigs that read like a flag of authority planted in the Paris runway, after a couple of runway wobbles from their new designer.

In an annex of the Rodin Museum lined with curtain fabric, Jonathan Anderson — the 41-year-old Northern Irish designer celebrated for turning Loewe into one of luxury's most admired labels and now serving as Dior's creative director — pared the décor down to near-nothing.

On Wednesday, Anderson's clothes finally carried the argument.

The stakes were visible in the room: Robert Pattinson, Lewis Hamilton and SZA were among the VIPs packed in close.

Then came the refrain: As one person in the front row put it: ''Dior is back. It's a good day for fashion.''

Why it landed: confidence

This show felt like authority.

The gender-bending came through, but it was not weightless.

It was anchored, literally, in masculine boots and small-heeled lace-ups.

It was a smart back-and-forth signature for the designer who garnered laudits at Loewe, and now seems to have found his groove again amid the heritage house's weighty legacy.

Dior coats as the spine

The strongest argument came in outerwear.

He riffed, lightly but knowingly, on Dior's most guarded code: the Bar jacket and the New Look line.

The nod was subtle: an ever-so-faint curve at the hip, a hint of structure, a memory of the house's postwar hourglass without the old ceremony.

The pressure is on

Dior is one of luxury goods conglomerate LVMH's flagship houses, a pillar of the group's fashion-and-leather-goods engine at a moment when luxury demand has been under pressure.

Across the sector, the terrain has turned harsher: rival luxury group Kering has been battling a prolonged slump at Gucci, with results showing steep sales declines that have weighed on the group.

After Dior's first ever female designer Maria Grazia Chiuri 's long run ended last year with increasingly mixed critical notices in some quarters, the company has placed an unusually large wager on Anderson — the first designer in Dior's modern history to oversee women's ready-to-wear, haute couture and menswear under a single creative hand.

The ideas: high-low, old-new

Dior's house notes cast the characters as modern-day flâneurs: an aristo-youth roaming Paris, jolted into new connections by couture history.

The brand pointed to Paul Poiret, a designer known for fluid forms and far-reaching references, and pitched the collection as contradiction made coherent: Dior formality with denim and parkas; tailoring with technical outerwear; old with new.

On the runway, those collisions worked best when treated as construction rather than mood.

Glam Rock twists

The palette stayed somber, which only sharpened the punctuation marks: the shock of yellow hair, and glittering glam-rock epaulettes that suggested a designer in full command of his own drama.

Accessories reinforced the same strategy.

Lace-ups with small heels and loafers kept the body planted: blur the masculine-feminine line, but do not let the clothes drift.