Jonathan Anderson

0:06Welcome to This Cultural Life, the series in which some of the world's leading creative people choose the most important influences and experiences that have inspired inspired by the world. becoming a critical and commercial success. He's also run his own label, J.W. Anderson, since 2008 and launched collaborative lines with high street brands including Topshop and Uniqlo. In 2025, Jonathan Anderson's lauded status within the fashion world was confirmed when he became creative director of the French fashion house Dior, overseeing menswear, womenswear and couture. The recipient of many accolades since winning the Emerging Talent Prize at the British Fashion Awards in 2012.

1:00He was named Designer of the Year in 2023 and 2024. Jonathan Anderson, welcome to This Cultural Life. Thank you very much for having me. You've recently taken over as the creative director of Dior, one of the greatest fashion houses, which makes you, arguably, the most important fashion designer in the world right now. How much creative tension is there between the need to respect the history and the traditions of Dior and your own needs to create something new under the Dior name? Well, I've only been there since March. So, you know, it is a very interesting process for me. You know, previously I was at a brand called Loewe, a Spanish brand.

1:43And I have been put at Dior to do both men's and women's, which is the first time that they have combined the role. First time since Christian Dior himself. And, you know, it's a very interesting process to go through at the moment, because ultimately you are dealing with nostalgia. You are dealing with legacies of multiple designers. You know, you have Christian Dior, who has this short period that he does for 10 years and he dies. Then he is taken over by Yves Saint Laurent. And then from then you have Mark Bowen, you have John Franco-Forey, you have John Galliano, you have Raph Simmons, you've got Mario Grazia Curie.

2:21the list goes on. So people have a vision of what Dior is and the legacy of Dior, something which is in the public imagination. And at the same time, you're trying to work out how to articulate it today. And you mentioned nostalgia. Let me just ask you something about in June, you unveiled your debut menswear collection. And one of the celebrities who turned up there dressed by you in Dior was the pop star Sabrina Carpenter, who had a cinched blazer and then she had a sort of a pleated midi skirt. It looked like something that Christian Dior himself might have designed in the 1940s. Was that your nod to the past, in fact, to his new look, to unveil yours?

2:59Well, Sabrina was wearing the classic new look in grey flannel, which is the bar jacket, which is what Dior was very famous for doing. And I thought it was interesting to reproduce it as a kind of reminder on, you know, one of the most famous people in the world to kind of see that the new look has transcended for many, many, many decades. And I wanted to do in grey flannel because ultimately Christian Dior starts Dior straight after the war. And grey flannel is something that was in abundance. You know, there was a moment where rationing was still in place in France. And it's a very interesting period in creativity.

3:38You know, the war has ended. France is trying to get back on its feet. And he turns to kind of dreamworks. He's nearly kind of the fashion Disney. You know, he's trying to make people dream again. But at the same time, he comes out of conflict. Yes. It's a fascinating brand. And I think it does reflect the period. So he is designing in response to the times. Do you have to similarly be aware when you're designing of what is happening in the world? Is there a social dimension to some of the designs that you're coming up with? I think this is the job of a fashion designer. I think when you look at history, great fashion came out of a reflection of the political landscape, the creative landscape.

4:24You cannot design in a vacuum.

4:31well let's explore the road to Dior on this cultural life Jonathan Anderson my guests choose the most important influences and experiences that have inspired their own creativity and your first choice is growing up in Northern Ireland in the 1980s so where exactly was the family home so I grew up in a village called McEfeld which is in Derry bang in the middle of yeah right by Loch Ness. MacArthur is a kind of main town, but even in a tinier town called The Loop. You know, I grew up there up until I was 20. My parents and my brother and my sister still live there. I go there every Christmas. Very rural.

5:07Very rural. Like my grandfather was a farmer. On my dad's side and my mother's side, my grandfather was a textile designer. I chose Northern Ireland because I think I wouldn't be where I am today without Northern Ireland. anywhere where you grow up tells you who you want to be or tell you what you want to escape from well let's just talk about visual stimulus because you have landscape there as i say very rural how what did that do for your creative imagination do you think anyone who's been to northern ireland is very gray it's very rainy every time i ring my mother it's always raining and she always talks about the weather what i quite like is it is a gray landscape with green where color ultimately has to stand out in it.

5:48The horizon line is nearly low somehow, which means it's all about mid-tones nearly. So when I was growing up, I liked colour. I liked pattern. I liked fashion. Because it contrasted to what everything was around. It contrasted to everything that was around. Plus, I was born in 84. I grew up in the 90s, really, in that period. And, you know, when you have a horizon, the rural horizon, which is like being on a farm, Macrofault is a small town you are always looking outwards, you're trying to find something you're living on an island ultimately and this for me has always been an element of fantasy somehow, like this idea that if you're living in the countryside you learn to entertain yourself you know Fashion is a fantasy and fashion became a fantasy which weirdly I would see on a Sunday through the Sunday Times Style magazine That was how I started to understand what was happening in fashion.

6:49From a young age? Yeah, from the supplement that used to come with the Sunday Times. You would get it and it would have like fashion shows and it would have what's happening, parties and social. Which, from where I was, was like completely foreign. It was glamour far away. Yeah. And did it make you feel, I want to be part of that, that's where I need to be? I think I liked it as what I wanted to look like, ultimately, or how I wanted to dress. I became very obsessed by clothing. We didn't have high fashion in the house, but, you know, I became quite obsessed by it. But you were living next door to your grandfather's farm, weren't you?

7:24So, I mean, I presume a lot of the time it was wellies and jeans and overalls. Yeah, it's a very, very different thing. So, for me, then it was not until, you know, I was nine or ten, when something like TK Maxx came to Northern Ireland, where you could buy discounted fashion. then usually the things were so radical things that no one bought them so it would be like orange trousers or it would be something that was maybe not the easiest thing to wear but that was the cheapest thing because it used to get marked down and you were attracted to the flamboyant yeah but the 90s in northern I was it was a country in paralysis it was going nowhere at one point you know we forget I think that's the thing with society we forget but you were born in the midst of the troubles in Good Friday Agreement signed in 1998, so you would have been probably, what, 13 years old at that time.

8:14How aware of the troubles, as they're known, were you growing up? It's part of your life. You become immune to it, if that means it. You were born into it, you're immune to it. Were you aware of danger and violence? Yeah, of course. You know, I saw many things in life that I wish I never saw. In McAfield, I remember when you went to school and the the next day the entire street was gone you know probably one of the most horrific bombings happened in mackerfeld um but you know i always remember as a child like my grandfather on my dad's side the farm was in just outside of oma in a town called six mile cross and i'll will never forget the day when my mother had bought us shoes and none of it fitted in a store in a sales shop in Oma.

9:08It was one of those days where everything went wrong. Me and my brother had let cows out out of badness. My sister had been bitten by a dog. My grandfather was taking my sister to the hospital to go and get stitches. And this is the time there's no telephones. My grandfather I remember ringing the house from a public telephone saying that they couldn't get to a hospital because they were packed. And my mother had gone to return shoes in Oma and she gets to the bottom part of the town and has a car parked to the other top of the street. And she then went up in the place where you can't go to the top because there was a bomb at the top.

9:53My mother's like, well, I need to get home. Like, I've got my things. And she goes through Woolworths, gets into the car, and as she's driving off, the side of the town that she was in completely evaporated. This is the air, my bomb. Yeah. Good evening. As many as 12 people are thought to have been killed in a serious bomb attack at Omer in Northern Ireland at 3 o 'clock this afternoon. And it's a scene of just devastation. All the shock fronts have just been ripped off and the rubble is lying a foot deep in the road. I think this was probably a turning point in my life because I remember it very visually.

10:30I remember the kind of emotion of that moment. And I think it's the first time that it was like not just a blown out street or a car bomb or a shooting. It was very different because it was a kind of time and place someone could be gone or not gone. And she could have been gone because she could, she was missed it by minutes possibly. And I think this, for me, I think will always affect me. Good evening. The terrorist splinter group The Real IRA say they planted the Omer bomb. Even with 28 dead and more than 100 injured, they now say they didn't mean to kill civilians. Mo Morlum called their statement pathetic and contemptible.

11:11I'll be asking Sinn Féin's Martin McGill... I was very lucky that my parents were very liberal. They brought us up not on one side of the fence or the other. of the sectarian divide yeah they were you know protestant family yeah protestant family but we were never brought up in that way they did not believe in in schools that were not mixed and when you think about this is so crazy you know like it's a crazy period but i'm glad i went through it because i think when i watch the news now and i look at countries that are divided and we are We've defined it everywhere today. I always think back to where Northern Ireland was before the Good Fighting Agreement and realised when you start to see each other's differences and talk, then you can get resolution.

12:02Do you know what I mean? And it's about young people, ultimately. That's the political worldview that you've obviously kept with you. Do you apply that to the work as well? Yeah. You have to listen to both sides. Try and get the hands out. Willie Anderson, capped 21 times for Ireland in the past four seasons, is in his first month as one of three new regional development officers appointed by the Irish Rugby Football Union. Let's talk about your father, Willie Anderson, who was a professional rugby player and coach. And he captained the All-Ireland rugby team, in fact. I mean, I capped, I think, 27 times.

12:37Really tough reputation. Yeah. Big guy. How aware of his sporting success were you at the time growing up? Very. My father obviously was coaching and played. He was very well known in Ireland. I had a father that people would ask for autographs for, which is strange. In Ireland, rugby is huge. Were you expected to play? Did you play? I did play. I was shocking at it. My brother played it professionally. I was not very good at it. I was a swimmer. Soft surfaces, easier. More of a loner. my father was a huge inspiration he woke up one day when he was younger on a farm and decided he was going to play for the Irish rugby team he was so driven in that way and someone who was probably quite controversial too he was very famous for learning the haka and doing the haka against when the New Zealand team were doing it this is that moment when the All Blacks are facing down they're performing the haka he rallied his team and they actually sort of confronted the haka Yeah.

13:36Well, I haven't seen that before, one challenge being met by another. But Willie Anderson got a great cheer from the Irish crowd here, naturally very partisan on this big occasion, for taking on the hacker in that way. You're like, today I don't think he would do that. Well, he didn't stand back and respect it, did he? No. But my father is a very radical character and very driven and a perfectionist, you know. So physically and culturally, rugby is a million miles away from the world of haute couture. But have any aspects of your father's work influenced your designs, do you think? I do love the rugby shirt.

14:13I think it just reminds me of childhood. But I think more so my dad is a very good leader. You know, if you're a coach of a rugby team, you've got to get everyone to go in one direction. You know, you've got to win the match. And I think when you're working in fashion, you've got huge teams. I'm really just the coach. And I go out there and I have to kind of get everyone to go in the right direction. Well, you're coach and captain, aren't you? And that comes with how to deal with pressure and how to deal with all these different things. So I think growing up with a father who was very driven and a fantasist, ultimately, this was great.

14:49Because I think you kind of take that with you. There's a drive and a determination. And as well, you know, when my father coached, you know, we were used to him coaching like London Irish and then being fired the next day. You know, you get used to the volatility not to get too comfortable. Ultimately, you're kind of always have to be ready for what is next.

15:16Your next choice of cultural influence, Jonathan Anderson, is your maternal grandfather who worked in the textiles industry. What did he do and why was he so important for your creative development? Well, my grandfather was the creative part of the family. My grandfather used to work for a company called Le Mans. And they were probably one of the biggest textile printing companies. And they used to print tea towels and camouflage. And I remember before he retired, going to Le Mans and watching millions of meters of camouflage being screen printed. for the british army yeah and for other armies abroad so you'd have like blue camouflage green camouflage white camouflage all these different camouflages on huge industrial printing screens so not digitally printed as we do today for me this was the most magic thing to see and watch people draw it expose it on a screen to do tea towels or to do curtains or they made a lot of stuff for Liberty and textiles like that.

16:22And watching my grandfather, you know, when you see that, it's only a bit like Warhol when you see camouflage, when you see it and so much of it. It was like kind of, it was like very Willy Wonka at the Chocolate Factory. But it is screen printing though, isn't it? Yeah, proper screen printing. I remember, you know, we would leave, we'd get like swatches of things, like things that weren't right. So it was the transformative process of the, because a lot of it was linen, wasn't it? I mean, Northern Ireland, known for its great linen exports. So it's transforming the blank canvas into something else.

16:53With the endless possibilities. Yeah. And so do you think there is a link there into you then thinking, I could transform fabric into endless possibilities? 100%. I think it was the mechanicalness of it as well. Like this idea that you can take this idea and you can make millions of metres of it. It was like nearly going to a chocolate factory where you see chocolate being made or something. It was magical. Was it your grandfather's factory? No, he was just the CEO of it. He was like the kind of chairman of it because he was very, very creative. You know, he was very good at drawing. When we'd go and stay at the house, he used to make us learn how to do like symmetry or draw a vase and try to get the symmetry right freehand.

17:37An incredible perfectionist, nearly too much, and saw things in a different way. These things mark you ultimately and they make you kind of who you are, But you don't realise until you're 40 that all these things started to compound and make you tick, ultimately. But you say about your creative imagination being fired by those fashion spreads in the Sunday Times. Is this a moment where you thought, actually, I could do it? Is that a moment where you started to think that a job of the fashion world might be something? Weirdly, I didn't think about fashion at all in that way. I just wanted to be the character.

18:13I wanted to wear it. Are you talking about teenage years, mid-teens? Yeah, in my teenage years, I wanted to be an actor. I was in the National Music Theatre, and I think that was probably coming from my mother's side, where my mother was the English teacher. She did drama. And she acted. And she had acted. And so I really very seriously pursued acting. I went to the studio theatre in Washington, D.C., where I studied for two years. That is serious pursuit. That's not just joining the local rep company. That's going across the ocean. And you were doing Shakespeare? And I was doing Shakespeare. And I did a Midsummer with the Washington Shakespeare Theatre.

18:52I was really into it. But when I was in DC, I kind of ended up in the costume department. I became more obsessed by the costumes and the theatrics of the making of it. Once again, this idea of repetition. This idea of like 60 people dressed the same on stage. Or this idea of remaking something. Did you actually start making the costumes or did you just enjoy being in there? It was just like an Aladdin's cave. You would go in and people were sewing things and people were coming in for fittings, people dressed as fairies. And watching all of this and just sitting there gossiping and chatting and understanding, I just find this like mad.

19:31It was like being behind the stage was like for me became just as exciting as being on the stage. But interestingly, two decades later, you have been dressing actors for performances, most recently for Queer, the film by Luca Guadagnino, which starred Daniel Craig, adapted from the William Burroughs novel. A wise old queen taught me that I had a duty to live, to conquer hate with knowledge and sincerity and love. The difficulty is to convince someone else he is really part of you. What else should I be? Was that an ambition fulfilled that finally come around, do you think? Yeah. When I was in Washington, D.C., I came out.

20:15I understood who I was. And had you read queer then? And I had read queer when I was in D.C. I didn't know who William Burroughs was. I only bought the book because it said queer on it. So I thought I might learn something, which I did. But you knew you were gay when you were growing up in Northern Ireland, though? Kind of. But not to the point that I did anything about it, if that makes sense. I never did anything about it. Right. There was no gay community in Northern Ireland. At all? Like, I never met a gay person. Did it make it more difficult because your father was not only a rugby player, but actually a very tough one?

20:47Yeah, but then at the same time, my father was so liberal, you know, so it was sort of, you know, when I did come out, my father was like, oh, I know loads of gay people. I was like, okay. You know, I think sometimes the tougher you are, the closer you are to your femininity somehow. My father's very emotional, and I think he is very open. so I didn't have like a coming out that was tough it was nearly not tough enough or something This may be a flippant observation but I googled your father yesterday and there's a photograph of him from the 1980s wearing the tiniest shorts and they're actually quite camp really and they reminded me of one of your earliest designs for J.W.

21:22Anderson I wondered whether there was a link there Yeah, but when we were kids and you would go see my dad in a changing room the masculinity on a level and everyone's in very short shorts and it smells of deep heat. And of course, there's something about that. There's nothing better than short shorts on a guy, you know, sort of, because it can be tough and it cannot be. But yeah, it definitely had an influence.

21:51Your next choice for this cultural life, Jonathan Anderson, is Manuela Parvesi, who worked as a stylist for her close friend, the Italian fashion designer, Muccia Prada, and who gave you, I think, your very first job in fashion. How did you meet Manuela Pavese? I met Manuela Pavese when I was at Brown Thomas. This is a department store in Dublin. Yeah, in Dublin. I was working in the men's department. I was mixing everything up. I was probably being overzealous and over, you know, pushing myself out there. And her assistant, he was like, oh, do a couple of racks and my boss would like to know what you can do.

22:27And it used to be a period when Prada had Prada Sport and Prada. and they were never meant to be mixed and I had mixed them. And he found this very entertaining and she found this very entertaining. And they were like, if you ever come to London, we'll give you a job. Working on the windows. I kind of never did anything about it. And it was not until like, I finally got into a school in London, to university, because I applied to everywhere and got nowhere. Well, you got rejected. I got rejected from everywhere. Bar, I had a phone call back from UCAS who had said that London Culture Fashion had started a menswear course and there was loads of positions on it.

23:04And I was like, I'll take it. Get me to London. And then I was in Bond Street one day and I walked into the Prada store just out of curiosity. And there, my mother Pavese was like, why did you not get in contact with me? And she was like, do this wall, show me what you can do. This is visual merchandising. Yeah, so I did it. And she was like, well, you start working. So I went to university and did the windows in London for Prada. with Marmola Pavese. And I'd never met a character like this. I think she was probably one of the most important creative people I've ever met because it was someone who was submerged in fashion, was a photographer, stylist, had worked with Helmut Newton, had worked with Mewcha Prada, who for me is one of the greatest designers of the 20th century.

23:58it was like someone who was kind of a radical someone who would mix wrongs and rights and tough, an incredibly tough person really, really demanding So did she give you free license to design whatever you wanted to In the windows, yeah and you were kind of taking product and making it into something but you wanted to prove yourself to this person This is when I really became obsessed by fashion It was a fantasy that I wanted to be part of And when working with Mamala Pavese, you saw that fashion could be something more. It was where I learned about film directors like Pasolini and all these references you never heard of.

24:38And for me, that's what drives me. Every morning I get up, if I have not learned something or saw something I've never heard of, then I get very frustrated because I feel like I'm not looking. And that comes from her. And what about other fashion designers of the time who were possibly role models? Now that you're thinking at this moment, this could be a career for me. I could set up my own label. Who were the sort of fashion heroes at that time? Yeah, for me, Mutual Prada is one of my biggest fashion heroes because I think it's so subversive. Prada shows are amazing. They take time to digest.

25:10You sometimes reject them before you embrace them. Tom Ford, I think, had a huge... Growing up, Tom Ford was a superstar. He was changing how media and fashion and everything works together. The combination between these two, I think, made me obsessed, ultimately. Your label, J.W. Anderson, was founded in 2008, initially making menswear, but soon you were attracting attention for your gender-fluid designs, male models wearing dresses or diaphanous blouses. and there was one particular show which caused absolute outrage in the Daily Mail in particular. I'm going to quote the headline. It says, Is there a prize for the stupidest outfit at Men's Fashion Week in London?

25:54Did you set out intentionally to cause a stir? I didn't. I was working in a very small studio with Ben, who has worked with me throughout this entire process. And for us, it was reality. When you saw it, it was not radical. it just felt like we were looking at people around us we were seeing that people were dressing differently gender was not how it was being talked about today but you could see people dealing with ambiguity or dealing with how they want to be able to get away with what they want to wear or how they feel as well like how do they want to feel comfortable in what they are sure but in terms of putting on a stage or a catwalk you were well ahead of the curve Yeah, but we didn't realize it at that period.

26:40Then when I started reading tabloid press about it, it was kind of devastating because it was like a kind of, am I not seeing what I'm doing or something? It was a very strange moment because I think it was nearly like I was trying to destroy masculinity. But ultimately, I wanted people to see that there was other ways that masculinity can exist today. when you look at where we are today right now, I think fashion has come a lot further from where it was. It had become quite siloed in that period, because ultimately it was a shift dress or a ruffled short with a knee-high boot. It wasn't, now that's easy.