System Issue No. 25 (Spring/Summer 2026)

System Issue No. 25
Spring/Summer 2026
344 pages

One of the most compelling aspects of Jonathan Anderson’s first year at Dior has been the way he distorts and collapses notions of time. Since his arrival, the pendulum has swung between 18th-century Chardin paintings, late-20th-century Warhol portraits of Lee Radziwill and Jean-Michel Basquiat, and the new campaign imagery he creates for the house with David Sims, already forming the visual imprint of his tenure. His collections, too, revisit and playfully subvert design codes from Dior’s almost 80-year history, from Monsieur Dior’s Bar jacket onwards. For Anderson, the past is there to be mined, referenced across decades and centuries, and reassembled into something sharply of the present.

This was one of many themes we explored with Jonathan during the hours of interviews he graciously accorded us for this issue’s cover story. Time’s elasticity surfaced repeatedly: in conversation with Yorn Michaelsen, Christian Dior’s design assistant in the 1950s, Jonathan reflected on the house’s origins; with Tim Blanks, Jennifer Lawrence, Magdalene Odundo and Sims, he spoke of the realities of implementing his five-year vision for Dior that binds heritage and modernity into one continuous proposition.