Last week at LACMA, L.A. finally got the fashion show it always knew it deserved.

About 900 guests — including A-listers Al Pacino, Miley Cyrus, Sabrina Carpenter, Miles Teller, LaKeith Stanfield, Jeff Goldblum and Anya Taylor-Joy, along with a throng of such industry titans as Amazon’s Sue Kroll, uber-producer Brian Grazer and Legendary’s Blair Rich — filed into the courtyard outside the just-opened David Geffen Galleries. There, against the museum’s monolithic curving cement walls, they took their seats for what turned out to be the biggest, buzziest and arguably most consequential L.A. fashion moment since Marlene Dietrich got tossed out of the Polo Lounge for wearing slacks.

“The house has a long-standing relationship with cinema,” says Jonathan Anderson, Dior‘s 41-year-old creative director, who not only picked L.A. for his first foray outside Paris since taking the job last year, but designed his Cruise 2027 collection with Hollywood noir as his inspiration. “Christian Dior worked with Hitchcock on Stage Fright, creating costumes for Dietrich,” he explains. “That was one of the main jumping-off points for this collection.”

Dietrich was all over the Geffen, particularly in the tight-waisted tweed jackets and hobble skirts that floated down the runway. But so were the spirits of Marilyn Monroe, Sophia Loren and Audrey Hepburn, conjured in slinky pastel gowns and silky unstructured dresses. With Air’s “Sexy Boy” blaring from the speakers, some 75 models glided around the museum, illuminated by the headlight beams from a fleet of vintage pink convertibles parked around the courtyard. There were streetlamps, smoke machines, even “extras” hired to stand around reading old-timey newspapers.

Of course, the May 13 show didn’t arrive out of nowhere. For the past five years, the great European fashion houses have been sashaying through Southern California like it was their own private catwalk. Gucci shut down Hollywood Boulevard in 2021 for its “Love Parade” (500 guests in director’s chairs along the Walk of Fame). Chanel took over Paramount in 2023. Louis Vuitton invaded La Jolla’s Salk Institute in 2022.

But with his LACMA show, Anderson took the spectacle to a whole other level, using the city’s newest architectural wonder as a backdrop for a presentation that not only lifted his own reputation as one of fashion’s most ascendant designers but L.A.’s as one of fashion’s most important stages.

This story appeared in the May 20 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.

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