Dior's Holiday Film Is a Hand-Drawn Sylvain Chomet Short With Robert Pattinson and Rihanna

Dior's holiday campaign this year is a cartoon. Christian Dior's Night in Color is an animated short film by Sylvain Chomet, the French director of The Triplets of Belleville and The Illusionist, with creative direction by Jonathan Anderson. Dior announced it on Instagram on Tuesday, November 3, and the film goes up on Wednesday, November 4, at 10am Paris time (4am in New York).

Dior's post sets the scene: "It's a winter's night in 1949 and all is quiet at 30 Avenue Montaigne when suddenly the phone rings. It's Marlene Dietrich and she needs a new dress…" Robert Pattinson narrates. Louis Garrel voices Christian Dior and Camille Cottin plays Dietrich, with Josh O'Connor as The Chair, LaKeith Stanfield as Ron the Director, Nine d'Urso, Nadia Tereszkiewicz and Greta Lee as The Bees, and Rihanna as The Lucky Star.

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The story

WWD, which ran the campaign as an exclusive, says the plot turns on Dietrich's director deciding to shoot in colour, so Dior has to make her a new dress. Helped by his "bees", the house's affectionate name for its seamstresses, he makes a glittering bustier gown that WWD says is inspired by the 1949 Junon dress. It also notes that the real Dietrich never wore that design, and only ever wore Dior on screen in black-and-white films, and that the story nods to her "No Dior, no Dietrich!" demand when negotiating Alfred Hitchcock's Stage Fright. The Lucky Star Rihanna voices is one of the house's emblems.

Dior

Anderson told WWD the film is drawn entirely by hand, using methods that date back to the 1940s. Scenes and characters from it will go into Dior's store windows around the world, WWD reports, and a holiday gift line of ready-to-wear, accessories and homeware has started arriving in stores.

Dior

Our read

The Hollywood thread isn't new for Anderson's Dior. WWD ties the film to the Hollywood theme of his Cruise 2027 collection, shown in Los Angeles in May, and notes it's Dior's second animated project of the year, after a Miss Dior fragrance film with the French studio Remembers. Anderson also oversaw Loewe's three-part Studio Ghibli collaboration, so his interest in animation predates Dior.

A cartoon also gives a luxury house more to work with at Christmas than a photo shoot does: a cast of actors heard rather than seen, and characters that can fill store windows worldwide, which is where WWD says they're going. Dior hasn't said how long the film runs or named the pieces in the gift line, and we'll add both once it does.