Dior’s Star-Studded LACMA Show Was Pure Hollywood Magic

Jonathan Anderson didn’t just stage a fashion show at LACMA Wednesday night. He made a statement about what Dior is becoming — and what Hollywood still means to the world’s most storied couture house.

The setting alone announced the ambition. LACMA’s newly opened David Geffen Galleries — designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Peter Zumthor — became a cinematic dreamscape for the hour, its monolithic curving cement walls draped in fog, vintage convertibles parked along the runway, streetlamps casting moody shadows as the bassline from Air’s “Sexy Boy” bounced off hard concrete. Convertible headlights washed over glitter-slicked gowns and metallic knits. It felt less like a fashion presentation than a film set someone forgot to stop rolling on.

The front row was, quite literally, a Hollywood power grid. Sabrina Carpenter — fresh off wearing custom Dior while headlining Coachella and a Dior dress made from Sabrina film strips to last week’s Met Gala — arrived in Look One from the runway itself, a buttery yellow ruffled dress. Anya Taylor-Joy kept it sleek in a little black dress. Miley Cyrus, newly blonde, went conspicuously casual in denim on denim, which, as it turned out, was entirely on theme.

Miles Teller, Mikey Madison, Macaulay Culkin, Tracee Ellis Ross, Taylor Russell, Miranda Kerr, LaKeith Stanfield, Jeff Goldblum, Jisoo, Greta Lee (cute parents in tow), Gia Coppola, Lauren Hutton and Dior executive Delphine Arnault filled out a crowd that also included industry heavyweights — Amazon’s Sue Kroll, UTA’s Dan Constable, producer Brian Grazer, director Sean Baker, composer Danny Elfman and costume designer Ruth E. Carter. Paul W. Downs and Macaulay Culkin both wore Anderson’s new New Look jacket, which has quietly become the menswear piece of the season for men and women alike.

And then there was Al Pacino, who arrived with his earbuds still in, radiating his signature curmudgeonly energy, utterly unbothered by the spectacle around him. Honestly, iconic.

The fashion house thoughtfully supplied everyone with little Dior blankets to ward off the evening chill. Because of course they did.

A Love Letter to Old Hollywood, Written in a New Hand

Anderson’s starting point was a specific, loaded moment in fashion history: Christian Dior’s costumes for Marlene Dietrich in the 1950 film Stage Fright. Dietrich, famously, had told Alfred Hitchcock and her Warner Bros. bosses, “No Dior, no Dietrich!” while negotiating for the couturier to dress her — and that iron-willed glamour became the collection’s spiritual backbone.

But Anderson didn’t simply recreate. The nipped-waist suiting, garden-party florals, feathers and furs were present in spirit, translated into something a woman would actually want to live in. Seventy-five looks walked the W.M. Keck Plaza, evoking Marilyn Monroe, Sophia Loren and Audrey Hepburn in shimmering, fringed, off-the-shoulder silhouettes — but distilled with wearability in mind.

The collection opened with a trio of gorgeous chiffon drop-waist dresses decorated with rosettes, setting florals as the throughline: a gown blanketed in California poppies, whimsical scarves resembling bouquets, bias-cut dresses sprouting petals and embroidery. Faux fur robe coats and feathered slipper shoes conjured a starlet’s boudoir. Some models wore dramatic feathered hats spelling out “DIOR” in large, stylized lettering — playful and architectural at once.

Denim ran through it all, building on Anderson’s Fall 2026 collection: fuzzy textured styles, ripped versions, crystal-embroidered takes. LaKeith Stanfield in distressed denim cargo shorts and jacket in the audience felt like a deliberate extension of the runway. Sharp Dior suiting got a California loosening — frayed tweed blazers, more louche Bar jackets, a houndstooth chiffon duster that was immediately covetable. Menswear leaned into film noir, with grey wool flannels and flannel coats featuring shadow patterns echoing venetian blinds.

A collaboration with L.A. artist Edward Ruscha added typography-covered casual shirting that grounded everything in place — this was unmistakably a Los Angeles collection, not a Paris fantasy of Los Angeles. Anderson also wove in knit capes with a glam-rock sensibility and fun accessories: single dangling crystal mesh earrings, whimsical bird- and bug-shaped minaudières.

The show was presented at magic hour, sun setting behind the palm trees, moody shadows stretching across the museum plaza. After Anderson took his bow, guests filed upstairs into the Geffen Galleries — taking in views over traffic-buzzing Wilshire Boulevard and a brand-new Dior billboard featuring Irish actress Alison Oliver, whose star is rising fast after her breakout as Isabella Linton in Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights. Oliver had also starred in the teaser video Anderson released ahead of the show, driving through a scene deliberately reminiscent of Hitchcock’s Vertigo.

The Designer Who’s Playing a Different Game

Anderson’s connection to Hollywood isn’t just strategic — it’s personal. He designed costumes for Luca Guadagnino’s Challengers and Queer, and his instinct for cinema-inflected storytelling runs through everything he does. Wednesday night was his most fully realized argument yet that the house he now runs — the first designer to oversee all of Dior’s divisions since Monsieur Dior himself — is genuinely ready for something new.

The multigenerational energy in the crowd underscored it: Leslie Mann and Maude Apatow, Kimora Lee Simmons and Aoki Lee Simmons, stylist Elizabeth Saltzman and her son Charlie Walker, who modeled in the show. Old Hollywood and new Hollywood, sitting side by side under Dior blankets, watching the fog roll in.

The after-party moved to the Chateau Marmont, where Miranda Kerr and a wave of young Hollywood fashionistas filled the lobby until bodies were spilling out into the night. It got so packed that Jeff Goldblum and Tracee Ellis Ross quietly made their exits. The party, like the collection, had a life of its own.