Since Anderson took the Dior job, much of his life has been spent in transit. In November and December, apart from his normal commuting around Europe, he traveled to New York, Doha, and Beijing on errands for the brand, while working actively on six separate collections. One bright, crisp morning in Los Angeles, he tumbles down to the lobby of the Chateau Marmont to start a run of meetings which will culminate in the celebration of a new boutique in Beverly Hills. “I’ve always loved coming to LA—I would never live here, but I love being here,” he says, and begins devouring a large dish of yogurt and granola, gripping the spoon like a water dipper. Two young women across the room surreptitiously photograph him—a reminder, in the capital of celebrity, that with the ascent of Dior’s global profile, Anderson has become a celebrity himself.
On his first trip to Los Angeles, Anderson says, he got in a cab and told the driver to take him to 10086 Sunset Boulevard—Norma Desmond’s address. “It’s like a garage or something,” he told me. “But there’s nothing better than a Hollywood character of bygone days.” He partly laments the unmediated accessibility of today’s celebrities, which he thinks has eroded an iconographic power they once held.
“You had a moment where Dior would be creating the look for the studio for the actress, controlling the silhouette, the idea, the personality. I think you need that romance of what cinema told us fashion is.” He glances away thoughtfully, toward a candelabra near the bar. “I don’t mind Dior, in the future, becoming a little camp, a little bit performative—I think John opened the door to that. And Dior himself built the door.”
The new Dior boutique, a four-floor wonder with a floating spiral staircase on the prime block of Rodeo Drive, represents one sort of effort to restore a coherence of image. “It’s a new chapter for Dior,” Arnault says. The store, by the architect Peter Marino, includes a roof terrace, private lounges for VIP clients, and a restaurant with menus by Dominique Crenn, whose San Francisco flagship made her the first female chef in America to earn three Michelin stars. Since last summer, similar boutiques have opened or will open in Beijing, Milan, New York, and Osaka, all modeled on the enormous Dior store at 30 Avenue Montaigne in Paris. “These are very big statements and very big investments for us,” Arnault says; even in a digital age, in-person retail remains Dior’s sales driver. And Anderson’s comprehensive approach, taking control of all fashion collections together, suits the effort to build a unified—and universal—Dior world.
Anderson arrives at the top-floor terrace and lounge of the Beverly Hills boutique at twenty-five past seven. The guest list is, for a fashion dinner, eccentric and interesting. “It was the kind of gathering of individuals that really speaks to Jonathan and his mind,” Greta Lee, who attended in a simple, elegant gray Dior blouse and jeans, tells me. “It’s unexpected, often, these ideas and choices that he has, and the breadth and scope of what he cares about is genuinely interesting.” Lawrence comes with her husband, and Charlize Theron, a longtime Dior ambassador, arrives last. But there is also Gia Coppola; Maude Apatow; and Ejae, the KPop Demon Hunters voice star. Lauren Sánchez Bezos takes selfies and gives hugs. Mike White, the creator of The White Lotus, is there, apparently to his own surprise, dressed by Dior in a sweater and wandering around in fascinated alertness, as if taking mental notes. Many of the celebrity ambassadors whom Anderson has brought to Dior, such as Lee, are his longtime collaborators and carry a quirkier, wittier energy into what has long been a traditional French house.