You can feel that Jonathan Anderson is getting comfortable at Dior. Having successfully navigated the high-stakes first steps of taking the helm at such a behemoth house, this season Anderson turned up the electricity. Set to the sultry riffs of Mk.gee, Anderson’s “Dior aristo-youth” hit the metallic runway: an eclectic bunch with spiked yellow mullets (a tribute to Pam Hogg?), Edwardian ruffles and disco gloss.

The show notes plotted a story of this crew of modern flâneurs wandering through Paris until they arrive at Dior’s boutique on Avenue Montaigne. There, set into the pavement is a plaque bearing the name ‘Paul Poiret’. Poiret – the couturier who understood fashion spectacle way before it was customary: touring collections, collaborating with artists, throwing the wildest parties in Paris, ditching corsets and drenching fashion in decoration and drama.

From there, the collection clicked into focus. “Opulence,” read the notes – but not the historic, aristocratic kind (although there were embroidered epaulettes), this was about the opulence of youth culture: excess as freedom and rebellion. It was a heady, freewheeling stitch of European couture and British subculture. Nu-rave skinny jeans and sequinned tops. Indie tailoring and New Romantic glam. Parkas morphed into capes and bombers puffed into duvet-like brocade sculptures. Trousers were switched out for colourful long johns, and Poiret-era illustrations were cast as rich jacquards (crafted by the designer’s original Italian suppliers). Everything stayed lean and sharp. Cropped Bar jackets, shrunken blazers, elongated lines, Wild at Heart snakeskin boots. While wide technical jackets paired with slim tailoring nodded to Mk.gee’s signature look, the musician influencing the collection from beyond the speakers. Like Jonathan Anderson’s previous Dior menswear collection, it exuded fantasy – from the underground to the over-the-top. Of authenticity, joy, and punk – not with safety pins and zips, but with an attitude you simply can’t pierce.

Staged on Christian Dior’s birthday, it sure felt like a party – a celebration of the ornate and the unorthodox; refinement and revolt.