Page 121 - The Book For Men Spring/Summer 2023

DEATH, TAXES, AND KIM JONES SETTING THE TONE — AND operandi — has continued to infuse Dior’s menswear collections with a quotient
trends — for luxury menswear. These are the things that are guaranteed in life.
Alongside the late Virgil Abloh, Jones was largely responsible for the rapprochement between the luxury and streetwear realms in the latter half of the 2010s and early 2020s, offering up Louis Vuitton × Supreme as one of the parting gifts from his time at the maison for Spring/Summer 2017. Since joining Dior as artistic director for menswear in 2018, Jones’ collections have steadily evolved, albeit always fitting within the broader Jonesian aesthetic.
Early in his Dior tenure came much-hyped collaborations with the artist Daniel Arsham, Matthew M. Williams — then of 1017 ALYX 9SM and currently also of Givenchy — RIMOWA luggage, Jordan Brand, and Travis Scott. Luxury menswear, writ large, also became increasingly reliant on celebrity cosigns, co-branded and cross-pollinated collections (something
more profound than a singular collaborative item), and guest designers.
In other words, the things that Jones had previously popularized and was
expanding on at Dior.
More recently, Jones — who is also the artistic director of Fendi’s women’s
ready-to-wear, couture, and fur — has steered Dior’s menswear toward more traditional and timeless waters, favouring lesser-hyped partners whose work is likely best known by an older demographic. Think poets and painters rather than of-the-moment designers and festival headliners. The clothing has become a bit more reigned in, hewing more closely to the norms of classic menswear than those of anything-goes streetwear. Yet despite moving away from the hype, Jones — for whom collaboration, travel, and art are ingrained in his modus
of deeply researched cool for the discerning luxury consumer.
Dior’s Spring/Summer 2023 menswear collection is a sterling example of how Jones has managed to balance Dior’s rich history, artisanal savoir-faire, and traditional menswear with his own future-forward, collaborative approach
to men’s clothing.
“The collection is a continuation of the conversation that started for Winter
22-23, of looking at Dior in this 75th anniversary year of the house,” Kim Jones tells SHARP. To capture that spirit, Jones honed in on Christian Dior’s home in Granville, as well as on the British painter and Bloomsbury Group member Duncan Grant and his home and studio at Charleston in Sussex. Grant and Dior, who happened to share the same birthday, January 21st, also “shared the connection to the garden and light; they both lived in wonderful houses and had distinct private worlds that they both used as inspiration.”
Jones is cognizant of how much inspiration one can draw from places near and dear to creatives, be they painters or fashion designers. “For me,” he says, “[it] would be Africa. We lived in four countries: Botswana, Tanzania, Ethiopia and Kenya. I have a profound love for the different cultures of those places. They represent a fundamental source of inspiration for me.”
Jones has examined these themes in his previous work, and, as such, Dior’s Spring/Summer 2023 collection is exclusively about Granville, Charleston, and the influence those places had on Messrs. Dior and Grant. “For both Christian Dior and Duncan Grant, their homes, their gardens, and their private environments were so important for their creativity,” Jones explains. “It was these meaningful, private spheres that were translated into their work and became public.”
Normandy and Sussex — home to Granville and Charleston — boast similar
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