Launched this January, Jonathan Anderson reimagines the Lady Dior as a series of lucky charms
It’s no secret that Jonathan Anderson has a taste for the surreal, and one place he has long channelled his most eccentric ideas is through his accessories. Through his 11-year tenure at Loewe and under his namesake label, the Irish designer has moulded frog faces on wellies, turned red roses into stilettos, cast elephants in leather and, most infamously of all, transformed the plump grey silhouette of the least glamorous of birds – the pigeon – into a clutch bag.
At Dior, where Anderson held the title of creative director since April 2025, the designer has brought his unmistakable language of play – along with an exacting attention to craft – to the French house’s 75-year history. Ringing in the start of the year, the designer has released three handbag styles that merge his visual wit with Dior’s heritage: practical Book Totes, colourful versions of the Bow Bag, and joyful new iterations of the iconic Lady Dior.
First released in 1994 as the Chouchou, meaning ‘favourite’, the bag was famously gifted to Princess Diana and renamed the Lady Dior in her honour the following year. In the three decades since, it has become one of the house’s most recognisable designs, its boxy stitch-embossed silhouette reincarnated over and again by Dior’s creative directors John Galliano, Raf Simons and Maria Grazia Chiuri.
Offering a gesture of good fortune for the new year, Anderson’s first take on the Lady Dior imagines the style as a series of lucky charms. Winking to his Irish heritage and Christian Dior’s fondness for “magical thinking”, the most out-there of the collection is covered in hundreds of green appliqued leather four-leaf clovers. Nestled between the leaves, a single ladybird is visible only on close inspection, revealing Anderson’s ability to spark delight through the tiniest of details.
Elsewhere, three-dimensional buttercups bloom across another iteration, while more understated versions are rendered in the house’s signature cross-stitch leather in shades of green, black and pink. In a final flourish recalling the expressive 2000s Galliano era at the house, each style is finished with a keychain of charms spelling out D, I, O, R.
Released with a series of campaign images shot by David Sims, the new bag release follows in the spirit of the designer’s S/S 2026 womenswear show. One of the most anticipated events of the Paris Fashion Week calendar, the landmark display leant into what Anderson described as the maison’s “overt prettiness” – its nipped-waist glamour and 18th-century-inflected romance – which he yanked into the present through a rich exploration of materiality (and of course, doses of the surreal).
The first accessories glimpsed on this runway were at once beautiful, quirky and covetable – bunny-eared heels referencing Roger Vivier’s 1950s designs for the house, slouchy suede handbags threaded with metal Dior hardware, and sultry pumps stamped with a C on one foot and a D on the other. Built upon what Anderson described as a tension between fantasy and reality, the collection offered a momentary release from the heaviness of the world today. “We live in a bizarre moment,” he told Alexander Fury hours before the show. “This is escapism.”
What direction Anderson will take Dior next will be revealed in his upcoming sophomore collections, with Paris Fashion Week Men’s taking place later in January and the women’s shows following in March. For now, a pop-up opening at Selfridges in London this week offers the chance to experience the house’s new accessories in person – and perhaps pick up a little good luck for the year ahead.
Lady Dior, Bow Bag and Book Totes collections are available to shop now at Dior. The house’s Selfridges pop up is open from 8 January 2026.
