The China Mail - Capes, tailcoats and cravats: Dior gets its teeth into Dracula chic

And the most eagerly awaited show of Paris Men's Fashion Week Friday certainly didn't disappoint, with a galaxy of stars descending on Les Invalides including "Bond" star Daniel Craig, Robert Pattinson, singer Sabrina Carpenter, tennis legend Roger Federer and K pop stars Mingyu and Beomgyu.

A heavily pregnant Rihanna -- for whom Anderson has made several stage costumes -- also arrived fashionably late with her husband ASAP Rocky.

Anderson had led fashion fans on a virtual version of Hansel and Gretel in the run up to the show, expertly teasing them with little peeks of what was in store for them when he finally lifted the curtain.

They included a Dior Book Tote emblazoned with "Dracula" in blood-red letters in a nod to Dublin writer Bram Stoker.

The gothic 19th-century inspiration was clear in the show, with capes, tailcoats and tweeds, waistcoats and Victorian high collars and cravats.

- 'Obsessed' -

"I've always been obsessed by Dracula," the designer told reporters. "I never realised when I was young that Bram Stoker was Irish and I used to walk past his house without knowing."

The show opened with a male take on one of Christian Dior's most iconic dresses, La Cigale from 1952, which was in turn inspired by the decadence of the 18th-century French royal court at the Palace of Versailles.

Anderson kept the aristocratic dandy theme going throughout the show, taking in Irish rakes and dashing English dukes, their dickie bows slightly askew after a long night on the tiles.

He had posted two rather endearing videos of French football star Killian Mbappe before the show putting on a tie and trying -- and laughingly failing -- to knot a dickie bow.

The designer said he saw some of the spirit of Christian Dior in the striker.

- Mbappe's 'amazing smile' -

"Mbappe has this amazing smile and a kindness to him," Anderson said. "Coming out of the war, the greatest attribute Dior had was empathy. That is quite rare in a couturier... (and yet) after the war he changed everything for everyone and for France."

Anderson told reporters before the show that he did not want to throw out the baby with the bathwater after being given unprecedented free rein over the brand.

"Some of my heroes, the greatest designers in history, have done Dior, and I don't want to be chopping it all down," he said.

Rather he wanted to "decode and recode Dior without discarding all the great designers" who had worked for the label.

Indeed, his "Dracula" and "Les Liaisons Dangereuses" Book Totes were a continuation of the "amazing bag" his predecessor Italian Maria Grazia Chiuri had done, he said.

The mixing up of clothing codes also had something of the Haitian-American artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, whom the designer had called an "epitome of style" in an Instagram post in the run-up to the show.

Anderson's arrival at Dior had been flagged for months after he turned around the rather fusty Spanish label Loewe, which is also owned by the French luxury giant LVMH.

Just weeks after he was named to head Dior Homme, he was also appointed creative director of the Dior's women's collections and its haute couture.

- Changing of the guard -

With the luxury sector's once bumper profits plummeting, Anderson's appointment is an attempt to renew the fashion house after nine years under Chiuri.

It also comes amid a major changing of the guard, with Belgian Matthieu Blazy, 41, taking over French rivals Chanel and iconic fashion editor Anna Wintour saying Thursday that she was stepping away from American Vogue to move upstairs in its parent group Conde Nast.

Anderson, the son of former Irish rugby captain Willie Anderson, said that change was maybe no bad thing.

"The fashion industry is like a bonsai that might have gotten too big. We need to purify, to go back to what we like about it, which is making clothes," he told the French daily Le Figaro.

Trained at the London School of Fashion, his first big break was landing a job in Prada's marketing department before launching his own brand, JW Anderson, in 2008.

"I think he is one of the most gifted talents of his generation," said Alice Feillard, men's buyer at Galeries Lafayette, Europe's biggest department store group.

"We saw what he achieved at Loewe -- a really remarkable and brilliant body of work."

"There is something childlike yet very intellectual" about his collections, Adrien Communier, fashion editor for GQ France, told AFP. They are "very cheeky, very bold... and really intriguing", he added.

O.Yip--ThChM