The Secret Meaning Behind Jonathan Anderson's Just-Unveiled Dior Book Tote Designs

Fashion Week Men’s has just come to a close, with highlights from Dolce & Gabbana, Tod’s, Emporio Armani, Louis Vuitton and more. But all eyes turned sharply to Dior, where Jonathan Anderson presented his debut collection as creative director of the luxury French fashion house. And before a single model stepped foot on the runway, it was quite clear that Anderson was writing his own rulebook—quite literally.

Rather than sending a traditional printed invite and keeping everything under wraps until showtime, Dior teased snippets of inspiration, moodboards, and pieces from the new collection to a select group of fashion insiders via its Instagram 'close friends' stories. The most talked-about reveal? Three book-cover Dior Book Totes—a very literal take on rewriting the rulebook. And more were unveiled come showtime.

"It's pretty clever for Jonathan to obviously do a literal Book Tote with a book on it, it's a little bit of irony which Jonathan is a fan of," says writer, brand founder and OG influencer Susie Lau (aka SusieBubble, to her 700,000+ Instagram followers). As one of the few privy to Dior’s inner circle, she was among the first to see the designs.

"The fact that they are all first edition artworks being used on the book totes makes them feel really special. They feel like kind of collector pieces in the same way that first editions are," she says, noting the bags are part of a wider trend: literature and bookishness are increasingly being woven into fashion marketing. Think: Miu Miu Reads pop-ups, Valentino sponsoring the 2024 Booker Prize, Saint Laurent’s Parisian bookstore, and Loewe’s reissues of branded literary classics—also under Anderson’s own creative direction.

Still, the key question remains: why these books? Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Choderlos de Laclos’s Les Liaisons Dangereuses, and Dior by Dior were the three titles teased and later joined by Charles Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du Mal and Truman Capote's In Cold Blood on the runway—but the line-up is far from random.

"In terms of the choice of books, obviously I posted about Brahm Stoker, Dracula, it being a story about the Victorian fear of immigration which is pretty appropriate today considering what's happening in America and also in the UK," says Lau.

"Les Liaisons Dangereuses is a French classic which speaks to the heritage of Dior, and it also has a pretty sordid story line which I think Jonathan probably has an interest in himself," she continues. The novel centres on two manipulative aristocrats who scheme to destroy others’ reputations.

"And then, Dior by Dior is pretty significant in terms of the amount of quotes that it has that really informs our view of the house and what Christian Dior stands for, what he likes, what he doesn't like, the things that fascinated him. All of those things in that book really plug into how the house is shaped even today," Lau adds.

So, much like Maria Grazia Chiuri’s iconic ‘We Should All Be Feminists’ T-shirts, it’s clear fashion as social commentary is here to stay at the House. And, if Rihanna is already seen to be a fan, we have no doubt they'll become a coveted collectors item very soon.