Dior launches Christian Dior's Night in Color, a hand-drawn Sylvain Chomet holiday film narrated by Robert Pattinson

Key Takeaways

• Dior's 2026 holiday campaign is Christian Dior's Night in Color, a hand-drawn animated short directed by Oscar-nominated French filmmaker Sylvain Chomet.

• Robert Pattinson narrates the film, with Rihanna voicing The Lucky Star, Louis Garrel as Christian Dior and Camille Cottin as Marlene Dietrich.

• The story follows Dior making a last-minute gown for Dietrich on the night before Christmas, inspired by the house's 1949 Junon dress.

• The film debuts on Dior's online channels on 4 November, while a holiday gifting line reaches stores and scenes from the film appear in Dior windows worldwide.

Dior has launched Christian Dior's Night in Color, its 2026 holiday campaign and an animated short film directed by Sylvain Chomet, which turns the founder's friendship with Marlene Dietrich into a deadline at the Paris haute couture workshops. The Oscar-nominated French filmmaker, best known for The Triplets of Belleville and The Illusionist, sets his story on the night before Christmas, when Dior receives a last-minute request for a dress because the director of Dietrich's film has decided to shoot in colour instead of black and white.

The film debuted across Dior's online platforms on 4th November with Robert Pattinson, a longtime brand ambassador, as narrator and Rihanna voicing The Lucky Star, one of the house's emblems. Louis Garrel voices Christian Dior and Camille Cottin voices Dietrich, while the rest of the cast includes Josh O'Connor, LaKeith Stanfield, Greta Lee, Nine d'Urso and Nadia Tereszkiewicz. Night in Color is also Dior's second animation project this year, and it arrives with a holiday gifting line and a global run of store windows.

The story centres on the workshops, where a swarm of bees, inspired by Christian Dior's affectionate name for his seamstresses, surrounds the designer as he makes a glittering bustier gown for Dietrich. Chomet explained the decision of making a dress that the actress never actually wore by saying, "We chose the Junon dress, a very beautiful dress that Marlene Dietrich never actually wore. We took that liberty as it's a Christmas story and it's also wonderful to think that, in the end, Marlene would wear it in an animated film".

Jonathan Anderson, who now leads Dior, has put the technique at the forefront of the campaign "The film we've created together for Dior is all hand-drawn using techniques that go back to the 1940s," Anderson said in a statement, having first explained that he encountered Chomet's work at university when he saw The Triplets of Belleville. Chomet framed his own contribution in similar terms when he said, "With animation, I hope to bring a sense of poetry to the house of Dior." He connected with the house through original sketches on display at its permanent exhibition space in Paris, seeing a parallel with the way his own drawings come to life on screen, and he was struck at La Galerie Dior by the miniature dress reproductions and the ballroom-style space for evening gowns.

The campaign then moves from the screen into retail, because the collaboration extends to a holiday gifting line of ready-to-wear, accessories and homewares that has started arriving in stores. Scenes and characters from the film will also appear in Dior store windows worldwide.

Dior's earlier Christmas work has mostly relied on atmosphere and gifting, which makes this year's narrative a change in approach. Its 2022 Dior Beauty campaign cast Anya Taylor-Joy as a spirit of holiday magic, while The Fabulous World of Dior took over Harrods from 10 November 2022 with 44 window displays that remade archive designs, Junon included, in gingerbread, sugar and caramel. The Garden of Dreams followed in November 2023 with Taylor-Joy wandering through a snow-covered Parisian garden as Dior gifts appeared along the paths, and Holidays 2025 Enchanted World, directed by Benjamin Vu, led viewers through a maze of stops including Frosted Land. Night in Color keeps the gifts and the windows from that formula but swaps the fantasy setting for an episode from the house's past.