Jonathan Anderson's first Dior Cruise show in L.A. was a movie

L.A. is proof that sometimes all you need is a car, a streetlamp and that orange light to make something really special happen. Jonathan Anderson presented his first Dior Cruise show in L.A. under the fluttering shadows cast by Peter Zumthor’s new Brutalist building at LACMA, and the whole thing felt like the equivalent of sending a text after hours of getting ready, buzzing with anticipation: “I’m OMW.”

At the base of the David Geffen Galleries, anchored by classic American cars in colors like bubblegum and butter, where models sat inside sucking lollipops and talking close, was “an illusion of L.A., in L.A.,” so say the show notes. The scene mirrored the energy of a film set, all drama and specific lighting and smoke billowing from mysterious corners, honoring the house’s relationship with cinema. The show notes also came in the form of a film script — titled “Wilshire Boulevard” — opening with the “No Dior, No Dietrich!” of it all and followed by Anderson’s thoughts on escapism and dreaming. Today’s Hollywood stars — Taylor Russell, Greta Lee, Anya Taylor-Joy, Alison Oliver, Jisoo, Maude Apatow, Jeff Goldblum, Sabrina Carpenter, to name a few — were in attendance.

The looks that walked down the runway also called upon the dream, soundtracked by a score that included blues icon John Lee Hooker and beloved French band Air. A new iteration of the Dior Saddle bag was car-inspired, sharing DNA with John Galliano’s 2001 Dior Cadillac bags, featuring car paint surfaces and motor key charms. There were the bespoke Philip Treacy hats that revisited a technique the milliner has honed for years, with feathers forming typography in words like “Buzz” and “Flow,” worn with some of the men’s looks. There was Anderson’s take on the bar jacket that Christian Dior made for Marlene Dietrich to wear in Alfred Hitchcock’s “Stage Fright,” white with a geometric black collar. A grey flannel coat was inspired by film noir, featuring a stripe detail that took inspiration from Venetian blinds. A red velvet dress with a rosette was Anderson’s way of playing with Christian Dior’s practice of putting a red dress partway through a show “simply to wake people up.”

As polished-glam and old-Hollywood as the references were, there were moments that also felt sleazy and fun in the way that Hollywood in 2007 did, when getting photographed pouring out of a car on the way into the club was a rite of passage and full of its own twisted promise. Denim was intentionally pilled and embroidered with fine silver chains in the rips, replacing frayed strands of cotton (“the everyday becomes couture,” the show notes say). Leather pants were worn with oversized rhinestone-rimmed sunglasses. A fuzzy coat in almost a wood grain-like pattern was worn slipshod over a shoulder with a black dress. Shirts were made in collaboration with L.A. artist Ed Ruscha, worn by models with messy long hair and hands in their pockets, sporting the kind of attitudinal walk that the skater boy-actor-model working at your local coffee shop has perfected. “When I think of L.A., I think of Ruscha’s work, which has a fascinating sense of the mundane and how it relates to the city’s grandeur,” Anderson wrote in the notes.

A resort collection is all about the destination, and in L.A. a destination can be the most quotidian, normal-ass place. For example, even the rarest piece in your closet is first experienced by your car, or your backyard, or the courtyard of a county museum. L.A. people get that the mundane is the destination because our version of mundane is anything but.

Cut to the afters at the Chateau Marmont. It was a blur of champagne, full sized In-N-Out cheeseburgers, chic ushers wearing Dior uniforms with snug grey sweaters and slacks that pooled perfectly at the leg. Oh, and also, a collective fear that someone would slip and fall into the gleaming turquoise pool (but isn’t that the intrusive thought that hangs over every Chateau party?). Faces like Teyana Taylor, Mikey Madison, Paul W. Downs, Role Model and Dominic Fike, all in Dior, were soaking in the ambiance.

As the night waned and we piled into big black SUVs with an emblematic “CD” on the windows that were there to take us home, one couldn’t help but call to mind a Hollywood trope, where in L.A., the journey was the destination all along.