American Psycho: Does Jonathan Anderson’s New Dior Book Tote Hint at His Next Costuming Gig?

Reported by Vogue.

Jonathan Anderson's debut resort collection for Dior landed at LACMA with the energy of a director's cut — cinematic references baked into the show notes, Hollywood mythology threaded through every look. But the detail that's already circling the internet? A new book tote. Black with red accents, carried down the runway and spotted in Macaulay Culkin's hands: an American Psycho bag. It joins Anderson's growing literary tote lineup — the acid-yellow Dracula (already a Rihanna and Jennifer Lawrence staple), the dusty pink Les Liaisons Dangereuses, the cornflower blue Ulysses — but this particular addition feels less like an accessory drop and more like a breadcrumb trail.

Fashion House as Film Studio

The Dior-Hollywood axis isn't Anderson's invention — it's baked into the house's DNA. According to Vogue, Christian Dior designed costumes before he even launched his label, earned an Academy Award nomination in 1955 for Terminal Station, and dressed Marlene Dietrich for Hitchcock's Stage Fright in 1950. (Dietrich's reported ultimatum to the studio: "No Dior, no Dietrich.") Anderson has been deliberately excavating that legacy. "Christian Dior understood how important the idea of 'the dream' was for people after the war," he said, describing the crossover between couture ateliers and Hollywood lots as part of the same cultural current. His resort show notes doubled as a movie script. The man is making a point.

Anderson didn't exactly play coy about what comes next. In a preview conversation with critic Sarah Mower, he sketched out something deliberately large: fashion working with cinema, franchises, new business models — a "larger picture thing" unfolding over the next 12 months. He already has the credentials. His costume work for Luca Guadagnino's Challengers and Queer demonstrated a rare instinct — Zendaya's "I TOLD YA" tee became the defining character moment of the former; the latter required painstaking period accuracy for drug-hazy gay expats in 1950s Mexico City. "It's about characterization, and there's no preciousness around it representing just one vision," he told Vogue. "I think about cinema as history-making."

Which brings us to Austin Butler, set to play Patrick Bateman in Guadagnino's forthcoming American Psycho reboot — framed as a return to Bret Easton Ellis's source novel rather than a remake of Mary Harron's sharp 2000 film. The original's costumes, by Isis Mussenden, were an exercise in designer armor: Armani and Valentino suits as a pressed, gelled mask over violent nihilism. The question now is what Anderson does with that brief. A Dior Bar jacket for Bateman's morning routine? A saddle bag for Jean, stripped of shoulder pads? Anderson building an '80s Wall Street wardrobe through a Dior lens is either the most logical casting decision in recent fashion history or the most delicious provocation — probably both.

The American Psycho tote wasn't a coincidence; Anderson is telling you exactly where he's going before he formally announces it.

Read the original at Vogue.