The tree of life according to Jonathan Anderson in Dior SS27 A somber collection that is beginning to raise questions about Anderson's creative direction

Having reached Jonathan Anderson's tenth collection for Dior in just over a year, there is by now a muse that the Northern Irish designer seems to have chosen as his companion through this new chapter of his working life: nature. The cyclamens gifted by John Galliano that inspired his Couture debut earlier this year, the lotus flowers present throughout the FW26 collection, the poppies of Cruise 2027, right through to the ladybirds on his very first Lady Dior. Anderson's vision seemed almost like a perpetual spring, suffused with that sense of contentment — at times of languor — that washes over human beings when, after a long winter, the snow melts, the grass turns green again and the sun shines high in the sky. For this SS27, however, autumn seems to have finally arrived: brooding, pessimistic, at times existentialist. An autumn that brings with it fog — artificial fog, given that temperatures in Paris are still nudging 28 degrees — and several questions about Anderson's creative direction.

The SS27 venue was the same as last season's FW26, the Jardins des Tuileries, but whereas in March they were painted green, this time Anderson's glass garden was entirely white, with two walnut trees at the centre of the lake that seemed to embody a kind of tree of life. Not by chance, the show invitation consisted of a pair of wenwan walnuts, objects tied to a long Chinese tradition of rotating them in the palm of the hand. A practice associated with Yangsheng, literally "nurturing life", a principle of Taoist tradition concerned with the care and preservation of the body's equilibrium. In the collection notes, Anderson recounts how his encounter with these walnuts reminded him that "knowledge and preciousness can be found in nature", making their form, the way they age and their apparent symmetry the starting point for the entire collection. At this point, it is hard not to read this reflection on life also in light of the show's dedication to Mathilde Favier, Dior's international PR director, who passed away in mid-August along with her husband in a road accident. "With all our love — Jonathan and the Maison Dior", reads the closing line of the show notes.

But was this collection the best way to express the grief that has run through the entire Parisian Maison? All the hallmarks of Anderson's creative direction were present: the Bar Jacket, skirts constructed through volume, dresses that in motion looked like enveloping clouds around the models' bodies, and fabrics so light as to create a constant sheer effect — never overtly sensual, but rather romantic in the most historical sense of the word. This time, however, they were accompanied by new types of prints: from black-and-white houndstooth to Prince of Wales check rendered in warm tones, through tartans evoking the colours of the earth and, inevitably, floral motifs that seemed to depict geranium leaves and blossoms. The dominant colours remained, however, black and white: yin and yang, beginning and end.

The construction of the garments followed this same tension between opposites. Anderson asked himself what would happen if tailoring were treated like fluid draping, thereby calling into question the traditional separation between structure and softness, while the symmetry of the silhouettes was continually disrupted by small irregularities. The notes return repeatedly to the same question — "how light can a dress be?" — and to the idea that even lace can hold air, transforming tailored construction into something almost untouchable, almost more concept than execution.

There is another image that runs through the entire show: that of the seed that already contains within itself the form of the tree it will become — not by chance, the notes read: "Long before a tree unfurls its branches toward the sky, the walnut holds the knowledge of its own form." Today, however, the form of Jonathan Anderson's Dior is all too familiar, too predictable, too repetitive. Can an object continue to be desirable when we already know what shape it will take? Fashion once accustomed us to being surprised season after season: one season Marie Antoinette, the next Japan, the one after that flamenco. Different worlds, at times irreconcilable, that served precisely to keep shifting the imaginative landscape. Perhaps Anderson simply needs to start surprising us again. Even if, with eighteen collections a year, finding something new to say each time inevitably becomes harder and harder.