Less than two weeks ago, Fendi announced that Kim Jones would be joining the company as artistic director. The Roman house’s good news isn’t Dior Men’s bad. Jones is staying on at Dior, an arrangement presumably made easier by the fact that both are LVMH brands. The tremendous success of Jones’s Dior Men’s collections counts for a lot as well, of course. Over the summer, in a pandemic-quieted Soho, the Greene Street Dior Men store was one of just a few that could boast of lines outside its door.
This pre-season collection has more of what those customers are lining up for: identifiable collectibles like Dior Oblique tapestry B23 high-tops; a trophy in the form of a turquoise lighter, only 42 of which will be made; and new perforated leather accessories with reflective linings to catch the light, hence the new name Dior Oblique Galaxy. The clothes, too, have become fixations for collectors. This season’s must-haves are easy to spot: a camp shirt and matching shorts set needlepointed from seam-to-seam in the familiar Dior Oblique pattern.
In general, this collection has more laid-back vibes than you’d encounter at one of Jones’s Dior Men runway shows, see: the preponderance of shorts and his experiments with anoraks and parkas. But a Zoom call revealed the exquisite workmanship that goes into the tailoring, both outside and in. The buttons on his signature deeply double-breasted jackets, for example, are covered in the same wool serge as the suits themselves. And the stripes that decorate many of the looks? Inspired by the silk linings of those jackets’ sleeves.
