Lady Dior Rewritten - Jonathan Anderson

Jonathan Anderson Rewrites the Lady Dior for Spring Summer 2026

written LE MILE

For Spring Summer 2026, Dior presents a new series of Lady Dior handbags designed by Jonathan Anderson, introduced alongside the House’s Spring Summer 2026 ready to wear collection. The bags are scheduled to arrive in Dior boutiques from January 2026 and form part of Anderson’s first full accessories proposition for the season. The release coincides with a broader repositioning of Dior’s codes under Anderson, who draws directly on specific elements of the brand’s founder Christian Dior’s personal symbolism and his own background.

Jonathan Anderson is a Northern Irish designer who founded JW Anderson in 2008 and became creative director of Loewe in 2013, where he led a sustained focus on craft, material research, and heritage references. He was appointed creative director at Dior with responsibility for women’s, men’s, and accessories collections, marking a structural shift within the House. The Lady Dior bag itself was introduced in 1995 and has since been repeatedly reinterpreted by successive creative directors as a fixed product line within Dior’s leather goods category.

The Spring Summer 2026 Lady Dior proposals consist of two primary models: the Mini Lady Dior Clover and the Mini Lady Dior Buttercup. The Clover version is embroidered with four leaf clovers and incorporates a red ladybug motif, while the Buttercup version features three dimensional buttercup flowers in bright yellow tones, accompanied by a small bee detail. Both bags retain the Lady Dior’s architectural form and metal “D I O R” letter charms, with additional talisman shaped elements added to the hardware. The Clover model is produced in three colorways: green, black, and rose soupir.

Christian Dior was known for personal superstitions, including the use of lucky charms such as four leaf clovers and symbolic animals, which appeared in his couture practice from the late 1940s onward. The Lady Dior itself became globally recognizable after being carried publicly by Diana, Princess of Wales, in 1995, establishing its association with formal elegance and public visibility. Anderson’s use of clovers and talismanic motifs places the Spring Summer 2026 bags within this established lineage of symbolic ornamentation rather than introducing a new product typology.

Within the wider Spring Summer 2026 collection, Dior positions history as a set of elements to be selectively retrieved and reorganized, rather than continuously displayed. The accessories operate as condensed carriers of this approach, concentrating narrative and craft within a portable object. The emphasis on embroidery, appliqué, and hand finishing reflects ongoing investment in Dior’s ateliers, while the overt symbolism aligns with a broader industry trend toward legible icons in luxury accessories, particularly in the mini bag segment, which remains commercially significant across global markets.

The Mini Lady Dior Clover and Mini Lady Dior Buttercup bags will be available in Dior boutiques worldwide from January 2026. Production involves hot stamping followed by individual hand embroidery of the clover motifs, with additional custom metal charms developed specifically for this release.

By grounding the Spring Summer 2026 Lady Dior in named symbols, documented craft processes, and an established product architecture, Dior under Jonathan Anderson reinforces continuity within the House. The resulting objects draw on identifiable references and labor intensive techniques, situating the Lady Dior as a deliberate extension of a long established luxury system.

DIOR SPRING SUMMER 2026 Campaign

DIOR-CAMPAIGN-Spring-Summer-2025-LE-MILE-Magazine-by-DAVID-SIMS-lemilestudios 1.jpg

DIOR-CAMPAIGN-Spring-Summer-2025-LE-MILE-Magazine-by-DAVID-SIMS-lemilestudios 2.jpg

DIOR-CAMPAIGN-Spring-Summer-2025-LE-MILE-Magazine-by-DAVID-SIMS-lemilestudios 3.jpg

DIOR-CAMPAIGN-Spring-Summer-2025-LE-MILE-Magazine-by-DAVID-SIMS-lemilestudios 4.jpg

DIOR-CAMPAIGN-Spring-Summer-2025-LE-MILE-Magazine-by-DAVID-SIMS-lemilestudios 5.jpg

DIOR-CAMPAIGN-Spring-Summer-2025-LE-MILE-Magazine-by-DAVID-SIMS-lemilestudios 6.jpg

DIOR-CAMPAIGN-Spring-Summer-2025-LE-MILE-Magazine-by-DAVID-SIMS-lemilestudios 7.jpg

DIOR-CAMPAIGN-Spring-Summer-2025-LE-MILE-Magazine-by-DAVID-SIMS-lemilestudios 8.jpg

DIOR-CAMPAIGN-Spring-Summer-2025-LE-MILE-Magazine-by-DAVID-SIMS-lemilestudios 9.jpg

DIOR-CAMPAIGN-Spring-Summer-2025-LE-MILE-Magazine-by-DAVID-SIMS-lemilestudios 10.jpg

DIOR-CAMPAIGN-Spring-Summer-2025-LE-MILE-Magazine-by-DAVID-SIMS-lemilestudios 11.jpg

DIOR-CAMPAIGN-Spring-Summer-2025-LE-MILE-Magazine-by-DAVID-SIMS-lemilestudios.jpg

LADY DIOR Campaign Images seen by DAVID SIMS

styled BENJAMIN BRUNO / set design POPPY BARTLETT / talents KYLIAN MBAPPÉ, LOUIS GARREL, PAUL KIRCHER, GRETA LEE / models LAURA KAISER, SAAR MANSVELT BECK, SUNDAY ROSE

(c) all images DIOR Press

Dior SS26

.second campaign
Anderson Begins Dior
Dior in Velvet, Dior in Blood, Dior in Fiction

written Amanda Mortenson

Everything begins in velvet. Heavy velvet, red velvet, velvet with history pressed into its folds like pressed flowers too soft for cataloguing.

Dior builds a room, Berlin builds a memory, the Gemäldegalerie breathes through the walls like someone reading Baudelaire aloud in an empty hallway. Paintings hang, modest and glinting, Chardin’s hands still holding onto domestic stillness while outside, the fabrics whisper and the tailoring plots a gentle upheaval. There’s no irony in this, just layers. There’s always another layer.

DIOR MEN'S
Summer 26
Indoor Scenography seen by Adrien Dirand

DIOR MEN'S
Summer 26

Jonathan Anderson stands somewhere behind it all, somewhere beneath a Donegal tweed, somewhere inside a 19th-century waistcoat with a tie that knows its own power. The trousers stretch with the weight of time. The tailcoats carry too much and choose to carry more. The past feels present, loud, unfiltered, embroidered in the way only garments speak when language steps aside. The clothes speak in codes older than sound. They tell stories with buttons and collars and hems that remember how to behave in candlelight. No one argues, the room listens.

The collection arrives in waves. Caprice stares from a corner. Delft spins, unsure whether to seduce or confess. La Cigale lingers like a perfume trapped in architecture. Every dress carries a title, every title carries a timeline, every timeline opens up a drawer of private references and aristocratic gossip. The Bar jacket shrugs over it all, comfortable in its own elegance, aware of its origins, aware of the way form fits when structure takes over and softness submits.

A Book Tote enters, unread but fully understood. First edition Baudelaire, Truman Capote, the kind of library that wears its covers proudly. A crossbody arrives, Dracula tucked inside, blood in the stitching, literature clinging to the lining like it belongs there. Sheila Hicks lends her hands to the Lady Dior, transforming it into a nest, ponytails of linen blooming in every direction. The bag turns feral, beautiful, certain. Accessories carry fiction better than plotlines ever could.

DIOR MEN'S
Summer 26

DIOR MEN'S
Summer 26

Charms dangle. Diorette details scatter across collars and wrists. And roses erupt from seams without warning. Embroidery blooms where thought once sat, the collection breathes deeply, exhales rococo, exhales restraint dressed as exuberance. No moment escapes embellishment, but everything wants to shimmer, and everything does. The show offered style as posture, style as attitude, style as inheritance passed through instinct and silhouette. A museum becomes a mirror and a garment becomes a ghost. There’s a gesture here, a lift of the shoulder, a tilt of the head, a pause in the fabric that allows the wearer to become someone they met once in a book or a dream or a hallway with too much velvet. Style lives in that space between and Dior stretches the horizon, Jonathan Anderson tapes it back together with thread dyed in memory.

Every model walks like they’ve done this before, in another life, under another monarchy. Formalwear tells jokes only archives understand and the trench coat plots. The shirt sighs, the trousers hold secrets without flinching and nothing tries to be wearable. Everything demands to be worn.

The music glows beneath it all, the kind that touches the hem of ceremony. There are no instructions. There are no summaries. Dior sends out clothes with blood in their pleats and novels in their pockets. The audience watches, some lean forward, some breathe through their teeth and others already remember this from a future they haven’t reached yet. Anderson moves like a curator lost in his own collection. Every piece arrives curated, arranged, unraveled slightly. The hemline flutters with purpose.

DIOR MEN'S
Summer 26

DIOR MEN'S
Summer 26

DIOR MEN'S
Finals, Summer 26
seen by Adrien Dirand

credits for images
(c) DIOR / scenography and finale images seen by ADRIEN DIRAND