Style Edit: How the Dior Crunchy bag distils Jonathan Anderson’s vision for the maison
Recasting Dior’s iconic cannage motif in sculptural volume, the new accessory is the creative director at his most tactile and assured
Since taking the helm at Dior in 2025 – becoming the first designer since Christian Dior himself to serve as the house’s sole creative director, overseeing womenswear, menswear and haute couture – the Northern Ireland-born designer has been quietly reworking how the maison presents itself.
The cannage motif underpinning the design is a defining code of the brand. Its origins can be traced to the Napoleon III-style gilded rattan chairs that lined Christian Dior’s Avenue Montaigne salon for his inaugural 1947 défilé – the legendary New Look show that announced a defining post-war silhouette in a single afternoon. The woven cane pattern became a house emblem over the decades that followed, appearing first on perfume packaging in 1953, before being elevated to near-mythological status with the 1994 debut of the Lady Dior bag, with its signature quilting.
Anderson likewise resists treating cannage as a mere graphic. The Crunchy bag gives the motif a sculptural guise: pressed into a slightly crinkled, semigloss leather that is defined but never rigid. The surface catches the light with every turn of the wrist, with the bag’s supple structure and gently padded volume imparting a lived-in ease. It is a play of contrasts at once faithful to Dior and recognisably Anderson’s.
