Literate is the hottest thing you can be this season…
For his debut Spring/Summer 2026 collection for Dior, creative director Jonathan Anderson puts his own spin on the iconic Dior Book Tote. A literal interpretation of its name, he plasters book covers on this iconic silhouette. One of the most prominent designs is a recreation of the first edition cover of Dracula, by Bram Stoker™, first published in 1897. The Book Cover collection has been highly anticipating, stirring up a buzz when it first hit the Parisian runway last summer and when celebrities, including Rihanna, Jennifer Lawrence, and Blackpink’s Jisoo, were spotted carrying the bag ahead of its official launch.
The bright yellow background, punctuated with bold red text, is also featured on a wide array of other products, including T-shirts, pouches, and the Dior Saddle Bag. As Dior’s Spring/Summer 2026 collection hits boutiques worldwide, we predict that Bram Stoker’s Dracula will be inescapable. So why not read it?
(Photo: Ivona Chrzastek/Dior)
BAZAAR’s fashion editor delves into this famous Gothic novel to find out what it’s about and why it continues to be an enduring classic.
Bram Stoker’s Dracula is not the first vampire story ever written. In Europe, there has always been a fascination with the myth of the vampire. As early as 1748, the concept of a vampiric creature was featured in poetry by Heinrich Ossenfelder. English poet John Stagg’s poem, The Vampyre, came shortly after in 1810. Closer to Stoker’s time, John Polidori wrote a short story entitled The Vampyre–coincidentally in the same writing exercise at Lord Byron’s Swiss residence that also produced another Gothic classic, Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla predates Stoker’s novel by only 25 years.
However, Bram Stoker’s version remains a foundational text to our present-day understanding of the vampire, from what their powers are to how to kill them. It has informed many modern interpretations of vampires in books and TV shows which we continue to consume obsessively. Who amongst us has not binged Buffy the Vampire Slayer, True Blood, Interview with the Vampire, Vampire Diaries, or the Twilight movie franchise?
(Photo: Buck Ellison/Dior)
The Plot
An epistolary novel, the story of Dracula unfolds through a series of letters and diary entries. It begins with a young solicitor Jonathan Harker, who is excited to be on his first business trip to Transylvania to help Count Dracula purchase a house in London. It’s all downhill from there. He’s trapped in the castle, encountering many horrors. While he’s trying to escape, Count Dracula boards a ship to England; when the ship arrives on the shores of Whitby, it happens that Mina Murray, Jonathan’s fiancée, is holidaying there with her best friend Lucy Westenra. Lucy is a beautiful young girl who is being pursued by three suitors, Dr John Seward, Quincey Morris, and Arthur Holmwood. Strange and scary things start to happen: Lucy falls ill, she’s sleepwalking through graveyards, and children in the neighbourhood start going missing. Professor Abraham Van Helsing is called in to cure Lucy–and from there, the vampire hunt begins!
The Review
Bram Stoker’s Dracula is a relatively long book at approximately 500 pages. The plot is complex, to say the least. It is dark and suspenseful, but I found a lot of small, unexpectedly humorous details that kept me going. For instance, there’s an image of Count Dracula making the bed, cooking dinner, and driving the coach to keep up appearances of having a staff at his castle when Jonathan first visits Transylvania. And let’s not forget that the character of Quincey Morris is (unintentionally) a highly enjoyable caricature of an American cowboy!
I loved putting myself in the shoes of someone reading it for the first time in 1897. Today, a reader would come into the book knowing what Count Dracula is, but I imagine it would have been mind-blowing for the readers to slowly discover it, at the same time as the characters. The way it’s written also gives an insight into what it was like living in the 19th century: Stoker juxtaposes these old folk tales and superstitions against his present-day reality, which is a world hurtling headfirst into the future, by incorporating the latest technological and scientific innovations, such as typewriters, phonographs, blood transfusions, and the Kodak camera.
Why did Jonathan Anderson choose Dracula to be a focal point of his debut Spring/Summer 2026 collection for Dior?
In his collection, Anderson plays with the intoxicating aesthetic of the era, incorporating romantic elements, such as flowing capes, aristocratic high collars, and waist coats. There is also a geographic connection between Anderson and Stoker; they’re both Irish. In a 2017 interview with AnOther Magazine, he recounts moving to Dublin, walking down Kildare Street, and discovering that Bram Stoker was Irish–because Stoker used to live in a red brick house just down the road. “Dracula became one of the most iconic stories of the 20th century, over 200 films have been made of it, and his Irishness is often overlooked,” he writes.
But it’s not just that. Anderson also acknowledges Dracula as “Stoker’s play on late-Victorian fears of immigration–mostly from Eastern Europe at the time–which goes to show how history repeats itself.” At the turn of the century, the Victorians did have a lot of fear and anxiety about the things happening around them. They were grappling with the societal implications of Western expansion and rising immigration, the fight for women’s rights, and the rapid introduction of new technology. Does that sound familiar?
The words of famous English poet Angela Carter in 1974 still ring true: we do live in Gothic times! And what is fashion if not a reflection of the times?
That is the beauty of Gothic literature; it’s a genre we keep coming back to because through these terrifying monsters, we can find meaning and navigate change. For that, Dracula by Bram Stoker is definitely worth a read.
