The Patient Work of Turning Around Dior

**Jonathan Anderson** (0:00)
Introducing Meta Glasses. You have questions, they've got answers.

**Imran Ahmed** (0:05)
Hey Meta, what's the capital of Peru? Lima.

**Jonathan Anderson** (0:09)
How do you say, where's the restroom in Spanish? Dónde está el baño?

**Imran Ahmed** (0:14)
Hey Meta, is a hot dog a sandwich? Technically, no. Spiritually, yes.

**Jonathan Anderson** (0:20)
Hey Meta, what should I do with my life?

**Imran Ahmed** (0:23)
That's one of life's biggest questions. What do you think?

**Jonathan Anderson** (0:27)
Ask anything with the new Meta Glasses.

**Imran Ahmed** (0:36)
Hi, this is Imran Ahmed, founder and CEO of The Business of Fashion. Welcome to the BOF Podcast. It's Friday, July 31st. When I sat down with Jonathan Anderson in his Dior Atelier last December, he hadn't shown a single couture look yet, and nothing he designed for the house had reached the shops.
He was, by his own account, still working it out, joking that every fitting felt like doing a PhD, learning an institution with its own rules, its own hierarchy, and its own way of making.

**Jonathan Anderson** (1:10)
I live off pressure. This was a very different type of pressure. It takes time for people to get used to this. I remember when I did my first show at LVMH, people were so not sure about it.

**Imran Ahmed** (1:20)
I definitely was not sure. I remember, but that took time.

**Jonathan Anderson** (1:25)
And it took time, because that was a business that needed completely restructuring.

**Imran Ahmed** (1:30)
Jonathan's first products landed in Dior stores on January 2nd. Six months later, this week's LVMH half-year results showed that the Dior turnaround is starting to bear fruit. Listening to this conversation again now, you get a sense of how big a task Jonathan was undertaking. Here's Jonathan Anderson on The BOF Podcast.
Jonathan Anderson, welcome to The BOF Podcast.

**Jonathan Anderson** (2:01)
Thank you very much for having me.

**Imran Ahmed** (2:03)
Do you know, I was thinking, do you remember we sat down for that conversation when you were just moving into your first post-LVMH JW Anderson offices? I think that was, what year was it that you-

**Jonathan Anderson** (2:22)
I'm trying to work out which building, I think I was in Shackle Lane.

**Imran Ahmed** (2:25)
Yeah, or something like that. And that was just when they, LVMH had invested in JW Anderson. So that was-

**Jonathan Anderson** (2:33)
That was 10 years ago.

**Imran Ahmed** (2:34)
Wow.

**Jonathan Anderson** (2:35)
Yeah.

**Imran Ahmed** (2:35)
Okay. So it's been 10 years coming. We're sitting here in the space where typically you were doing your men's collections. Yeah. But now you're doing old couture fittings here as well. Yeah.

**Jonathan Anderson** (2:51)
And women's.

**Imran Ahmed** (2:52)
And women's. And it's December 16th. Yeah. So by the time this comes out, it's going to be many, many weeks later. But it was really cool just now to have a look through all of your ideas and how you're thinking about couture.
Your first couture collection. And I guess I wanted to start with, when you're thinking about, you have these 18 collections you're doing. We have some of them are for JW. Anderson, some of them are for Dior. What do you see as the purpose of couture? First for you as a creative person, and then also in this massive enterprise that is Dior. Like what's the goal or the purpose of couture?

**Jonathan Anderson** (3:37)
Well, if someone had asked me about a year and a half ago, about couture, I would have been like, I had never projected myself into couture. I never really understood it. And I would have probably nonchalant, would have said something like, well, I think it's irrelevant or something.

**Imran Ahmed** (3:57)
Oh, really?

**Jonathan Anderson** (3:58)
I probably would have said something like that.

**Imran Ahmed** (4:01)
Why?

**Jonathan Anderson** (4:02)
Because I never really understood it. I never understood the glamour behind it. You know, there's always something very glamorous or something very kind of at bay or something, with the idea of the hierarchy of fashion.

**Imran Ahmed** (4:18)
And now?

**Jonathan Anderson** (4:19)
And now I have a completely different understanding of it. I feel like I'm doing, I kind of joke every time I'm in a fitting, I feel like I'm doing like a PhD in couture, because I have an amazing atelier and it's every day you are learning the process of something that has been done for so long in France. It is a kind of, it's an institution in itself. There's rules, there's so many different things you can and cannot do.
And in a weird way, I was trying to work out how do I approach that or something, or how can I relate to it or something? I was at the beginning, I found it very difficult to relate to, until they did one dress and then I was like, okay, I'm kind of addicted.