When Christian Dior came to Dublin in 1950 for the opening of his boutique in Brown Thomas, he could never have imagined that an Irish man would one day head his brand. Last week, Jonathan Anderson, the 40-year-old designer from Magherafelt, was announced as creative director of men's, women's and haute couture collections at the revered French fashion house. The boyishly handsome James Dean lookalike is the son of rugby international Willie Anderson, who played between 1984 and 1990, and Heather Buckley, a teacher. Despite being severely dyslexic he is also a 'wunderkind' who has achieved incredible success in the fashion world in the last 17 years. Ironically, it was an Irish woman Carmel Snow - then editor of Harper's Bazaar in the US - who gave Dior's most famous collection,1947's New Look, its name, when she complimented the designer's waspwaisted and full-skirted outfits as a revelation that had 'such a new look'. Now Anderson must achieve a similar feat to revitalise the brand almost 80 years later. His elevation as sole creative director across both men's and women's collections at Dior represents a major coup for someone who was an outsider at the start of his fashion career. From Derry to Dior is quite the journey and not the typical path to one of the most coveted roles in fashion. Originally, Anderson had acting ambitions and attended drama school in America, before returning to Ireland and a job selling menswear in Brown Thomas in the early 2000s. That crystallised his interest in a fashion career and he subsequently studied menswear at the London College of Fashion, graduating in 2005. He worked as a visual merchandiser for Prada in London and launched his own menswear brand, JW Anderson, in 2008. His gender-fluid designs rapidly gained attention, and he had successful partnerships with Topman and Versus (Versace's diffusion line) until in 2013 LVMH took a minority stake in his brand and Jonathan was hired as creative director at Loewe in Madrid. He wasn't yet 30. It was a rapid ascent and a decade later his role at Dior now cements his position as one of the most powerful people in fashion. Dior is the epitome of a traditional French fashion house and while not as profitable as Louis Vuitton, it is still a valuable commodity within Bernard Arnault's LVMH group. It represented almost 20 per cent of total sales revenue of €41 billion in 2024, across its fashion and leather goods segment. Under previous creative director for womenswear, Maria Grazia Chiuri, sales at Dior went from €2.2 billion in 2017 to €9.5 billion in 2023. However, in Q1 of this year, its fashion and leather goods sales were down 5 per cent and a fall in sales overall to €8.75 billion in 2024. Luxury fashion is now a ruthless game of numbers and when sales start to slack, a new creative director is seen as the route to revival, both creative and commercial, hence Anderson's appointment. The Derry man assumes his new job at Dior amid falling sales across the luxury sector as consumers have rejected the exorbitant price of designer items in favour of experiential spends like travel. Anderson's success at Spanish luxury house Loewe since 2013 notably bucked the trend for downwards sales in high fashion. According to Morgan Stanley, between 2014 and 2024, he took sales from a modest €230 million to between €1.5 and €2 billion. He also combined this commercial triumph with critical acclaim. Anderson successfully transformed the sleepy bourgeois brand based in Madrid into one of the buzziest in fashion by producing quirky, creative collections and exciting viral social media moments, including Rihanna's red, corseted Super Bowl outfit which revealed her pregnancy in 2023. Anderson made the Spanish house financially successful but also gave it cult status as a cool brand after it had struggled to reinvent its classic aesthetic for younger consumers. While Anderson's work championed the craftmanship of Loewe, he also explored an esoteric style that wasn't afraid to subvert expectation and challenge concepts of good taste. His hallmarks at Loewe included experimentation and creativity - he made breastplates from Anthurium flowers, shoes with tennis balls as heels and grass-sprouting sneakers. He constantly took inspiration from the art world and gave Loewe a cultural relevance that brought immense buzz. An indication of his success was the stars wearing his designs and attending his shows including Cate Blanchett, Daniel Craig, Beyoncé, Zendaya, Greta Lee and Ariana Grande. In 2024, he also featured on Time Magazine's list of 100 Most Influential People. Most importantly, he created a succession of It bags for Loewe including the Puzzle bag, the Gate bag, the Hammock bag, the Flamenco clutch and the Luna. This is what drove revenues to increase and would have identified him as a top candidate for Dior. Currently Loewe is first in the Lyst Index, a quarterly ranking of fashion's most desirable brands, trumping names like Miu Miu, Prada, Saint Laurent and Versace. Anderson's own brand JW Anderson also features at number 18 in this fashion ranking, cementing his golden-boy status. His next challenge is to bring that Midas touch to Dior and make it as appealing to younger consumers as Loewe has been for the past decade. However, Dior as a legacy brand with a historical place at the heart of French fashion will present a considerable challenge. Dior is deeply entrenched in the French establishment - it has been worn by many first ladies including Carla Bruni Sarkozy and Brigitte Macron, and is considered a jewel in the Parisian fashion crown. In France, fashion is not a frivolous thing but seen as integral to French cultural life as any art form including literature, music or film. Therefore, who leads a house like Dior is seen as crucially important. Anderson's path to Dior may represent a major personal achievement but there will be little sentimentality when it comes to gauging how he manages to revitalise Dior's fortunes. He will be responsible for numerous collections annually - up to 20 a year if he keeps his own label active. Every day will involve making hundreds of decisions while ensuring a cohesive vision is deployed across the thousands of products that carry the Dior logo. He will also be designing haute couture for the very first time in his career, which will involve learning a new skill set. To allow Anderson to acclimatise, Dior has announced that it will skip the haute couture show in July this year, with the designer debuting his first menswear ready-towear collection at the end of June and his first womenswear range in October. The rapacious pace of the role at Dior drove one previous designer, John Galliano, to implode in a dramatic creative burnout - he left the house after an anti-Semitic outburst in 2011. Later he commented that 'Dior is a big machine'. Galliano was only designing the women's ready-to-wear and haute couture, whereas Anderson will also be responsible for the menswear collections. It will be an epic workload, and the designer will need every ounce of his talent, discipline and time management skills to bring his vision to life multiple times a year. He is bringing members of his own team to Dior to assist him and has always credited them as central to his success. Anderson's partner Pol Anglada, a Spanish designer who was previously head of women's ready-to-wear at Loewe, is already working with him on Dior's menswear in Paris. Anderson has previously referenced how his childhood growing up at the height of the Troubles in Northern Ireland put some steel into his spine. No doubt his father Willie Anderson will have shaped his son's outlook too - teamwork and winning, intrinsic to sport, seem to have been passed on in his DNA. Anderson's parents have always supported their son, including by re-mortgaging their family home to assist him at the start of his career. Not surprisingly, Anderson senior is proud of Jonathan. 'In spite of his success, he's kept his feet on the ground and that is his most endearing quality,' he has said. Willie has come though his own challenges. While on a 1980 tour in Buenos Aires, Anderson was imprisoned for three months by the Argentinian authorities after attempting to smuggle a flag from a government building. He was later cleared of 'demeaning a patriotic symbol'. Then in 1992 came the death of Glen McLernon, an 11-year old schoolboy in 1992. McLernon ran through a gap between a bus and a tractor, causing an unavoidable collision between Anderson's car and the young boy. The rugby star subsequently drank to deal with the trauma of the tragedy but eventually attended therapy and has been teetotal since. The resilience displayed by his father in that situation has no doubt been a formative experience for Jonathan. Anderson has never denied the scale of his ambition. How he will now tackle reinventing Dior's classic style for a new era will make fascinating viewing. Fortunately, he has consistently exhibited a sharp instinct for the coming thing so while some may see his designs as strange, it is guaranteed that they will also be hugely influential. 'He has a very clear vision of the brand,' Delphine Arnault, daughter of Bernard Arnault and chief executive of Christian Dior has said while also acknowledging that 'it takes a few seasons to see exactly what the vision is'. Mixing tradition and modernity is a complex art - brands need to stay relevant to appeal to new customers but must also retain enough of their original DNA to keep existing ones. Anderson is well aware of the balance he must achieve. 'Brands are not museums - they have to function,' he has said in the past. 'Heritage shouldn't be confused with vintage.' Now he must navigate that dilemma in his designs. The Derry man's tenure at Dior will be exciting but tough. 'Fashion is storytelling and I admire big productions,' he has previously stated. The curtain is about to rise on Anderson's most important show to date.