What Does Beauty Mean at Jonathan Anderson’s Dior? An Exclusive Backstage Look

“‘The way you made the men look so good, I want the same for the girls’—that was actually the first thing he said to me,” Peter Philips told Vogue backstage, citing the clear direction that Jonathan Anderson gave ahead of his historic first women’s collection for Dior spring 2026. The new creative director wanted models to “look like the best version of themselves without looking made up.”

And so Philips, the creative and image director of Christian Dior makeup, prepped models for a “calm” makeup look that wouldn’t distract from Anderson’s details—bows of all shapes and sizes, reinvented New Look jackets, and cravats. “I did a new type of nude for JW,” he said with a smile, as he stopped to say hello to Juergen Teller, a familiar backstage face at Dior.

Outside, ushers at the Jardin des Tuileries dressed in relaxed gray Henley-style sweaters and drapey slacks showed guests to their seats. Jenna Ortega sat front row in a cutoff mini, while Jonathan Bailey smiled in a chill denim zip-up. When the show got underway, models walked under a glowing inverted pyramid suspended from the ceiling, wearing looks of exaggerated proportions and topped with milliner Stephen Jones’s hats designed to “implode into themselves,” according to Anderson’s show notes. There were long knit capes, sheer lace gowns with floating fairy-wing-like structures, and dresses made completely of sequined petals—Philips’s “blossoming” beauty reflected this decisive vibe shift.

“Before, it was more of an armor, more like protection—this one is more like a blossoming spring. It’s a new season, it’s a new chapter,” says Philips, who worked with Dior’s previous creative director Maria Grazia Chiuri for years. Anderson’s point of view for beauty is, “bizarrely, a bit more feminine,” he adds.

While the pair got a sense of each other’s style at the men’s show in June, Anderson (always one for a dip into the archives) studied Philips’s history of makeup looks before their conversations even began last month. Anderson presented him with a file of work that Philips had previously done for houses like Alexander McQueen and Chanel. “He was like, ‘I want to get to know you,’ and we started playing,” explained Philips.