It might come as a surprise that Kim Jones, who has devoted most of his Dior collections to collaborations with artists and writers, approached his 75th anniversary homage to the house as a one-man show. “We’ve done a Birkenstock, but only because we didn’t want to do a Christian Dior gardening shoe and copy it,” the designer said during a preview the day before. Actually, “one-man show” isn’t entirely accurate. As a tribute to the green-fingered founder, you could say Jones collaborated with the ghost of Christian Dior himself, putting in proverbial neon lights the archive genetics that naturally underpin any collection he does.
In true grande maison style, Jones erected a life-size copy of Pont Alexandre III in a tent on Place de la Concorde, just a stone’s throw from the real one. The nasal might of Christian Dior spoke on the soundtrack with godlike authority as Jones’s interpretations of the couturier’s signature silhouettes bathed in his favorite “Dior gray” strolled along the bridge’s banister. It was a straight-forward exercise: From the Bar jacket to the wrap coat and the cannage, Jones worked each of the Dior icons into something that would resonate with a contemporary male customer.
“It’s really complicated pattern-cutting but it looks so simple. That’s the beauty of it,” he said, pointing at one of the jackets on his board of looks. At Dior, cleanliness is next to godliness, but Jones’s time machine worked best when he deliberately chipped the polish. A series of Bar jackets and coats constructed like men’s blazers with white stitching that looked almost frayed had a deconstructed character to them we don’t often see at his Dior. It suited him. But mainly, it was nice to see a Dior collection that was purely Jones, so much so that it became self-referential.
Asked if it felt more “him,” Jones pulled up Vogue Runway on his phone and searched for the Fall 2005 collection of his eponymous label. “Funny enough, it reminds me quite a lot of this collection I did back in the noughties. That’s 20 years ago, which makes me feel very old and scary.” There were clear parallels. The sweatshirt grays in Jones’s collection became the Dior grays in this one, and he had—perhaps subconsciously—evoked the same sporty trouser silhouette as back then, although on this runway, his tailored track pants looked more like the athleisure that has seeped into menswear in recent years.
If younger audiences like sportswear, those trousers added a more youthful element to proceedings. A collection like this may not receive the hype of last season’s Travis Scott collaboration (the release of which has been indefinitely postponed due to controversy surrounding the rapper), but in its Dior-core it will serve to enlighten new audiences in what the house historically represents. “I think young people want to learn about things,” Jones said. “The thing about Dior is it still looks modern when you see pieces from the archive. That’s probably why it’s still here, and so big.” He took his bow with milliner Stephen Jones, who is celebrating 25 years at Dior, and reworked the founder’s beret for the heads of Jones’s models.
