The Elke Biesendorfer Dior cover for 10 Magazine Issue 77 arrives as one of the more considered pairings of new talent and heritage house in recent memory, placing the promising German artist and actress squarely at the centre of Jonathan Anderson’s evolving vision for the French maison.
Anderson, the Northern Irish designer and creative director of Dior, presented his AW26 collection on 3 March 2026 at Paris’ Tuileries Gardens, according to Wallpaper*. The result was a collection that played, with evident pleasure, against the house’s own codes: loosened-up Bar jackets, deconstructed frock coats, collarless cardigans with fluted hems, and lavishly layered tulle mini skirts trailing cascading trains. Chantilly lace, metallic jacquards and cosy knits in sculptural shapes completed the picture, the whole imagined in sulky black and candied almond shades. Pretty, yes, but with real backbone.
The Tuileries as Backdrop and Provocation
The choice of venue was not incidental. Wallpaper* notes that Anderson pointed to 1667, when the Tuileries Gardens first opened to the public, as a moment with its own sartorial weight: visitors were subject to strict dress codes governing exactly what they could wear inside. To show a collection built on the joyful dismantling of rules at a site that once enforced them with some rigour is the kind of layered thinking Anderson brings to his work. The tension between deference and disruption runs through every piece.
The collection, read in that light, feels less like a raid on the archive and more like a conversation with it. Intricate craftsmanship sits alongside genuine drama. Frock coats are taken apart and reassembled. Hems are engineered to move. The references are legible, but the attitude is entirely Anderson’s own. It is a collection that does not ask permission from the house’s past; it simply knows it well enough to argue back.
Elke Biesendorfer Dior Shoot: Credits and Context
For the cover shoot, titled Dior: La Belle Époque, Biesendorfer was photographed by Guglielmo Profeti, with fashion direction by Toby Grimditch. The text is by Marie-Louise von Haselberg. Hair was by Mickael Ambrosino using Oribe Hair Care; make-up by Lee Hyangsoon using Dior Beauty. The shoot was produced by Berlin Westend, with Justin Lahmer producing.
The mood 10 Magazine was reaching for, youthful, spirited, prepared to riff on the classics rather than genuflect before them, maps neatly onto what Anderson delivered on the Tuileries runway. Biesendorfer, as subject, carries the collection’s internal logic: she is neither overwhelmed by the house’s history nor indifferent to it. The pairing makes its point without labouring it.
Issue 77 carries the overarching theme of Future, Legacy, Heritage, a banner that suits the moment at Dior rather precisely. Anderson is still relatively early in his tenure at the house, and the work is in the business of establishing what, exactly, his Dior will be. Collections like AW26 (and covers like this one) are part of that argument being made in public.
10 Magazine Issue 77 is out on newsstands on 18 September.
