To understand the purpose of the reference, we need only go back to 2017, the year Anderson gave an interview to AnOther Magazine, focusing on the books that had impacted his education, life, and work. Stoker’s masterpiece appeared among them, and the designer said he’d made a particular discovery about the book, essentially by chance.
“When I got a job with Brown Thomas and moved to Dublin, I remember walking past a red brick house with a plaque on it that read ‘Bram Stoker, author of Dracula, lived here,’” Anderson said in the interview. “I had to do a double take because I never knew that an Irish person wrote Dracula. People tend to think it’s American. When I realized Bram Stoker lived on the same street, Kildare Street, that I was living on in Dublin, it took me a few days to process…. Dracula became one of the most iconic stories of the 20th century, over 200 films have been made of it, and his Irishness is often overlooked. The novel has been interpreted as Stoker’s play on late-Victorian fears of immigration—mostly from Eastern Europe at the time—which goes to show how history repeats itself.”
It’s not just a creative inspiration or aesthetic choice, but an interpretation that proves to be strongly linked to current events, an area that Dior’s newly appointed creative director—he recently took over from Maria Grazia Chiuri—will bring to the runway in this new adventure. Which, given the preview, promises to be very, very interesting.
