In one camp, you have K-pop stars being greeted by screaming fans and Robert Pattinson lit up in a blaze of flashbulbs, as the spectacle of a Dior show causes an unassuming area near the Jardin du Luxembourg to grind to a halt. In the other, the kind of lovely, artfully crafty knits and charming motifs you might see at your artistic uncle’s ramshackle cottage on the coast. I know which side I prefer.
Kim Jones, in his new collection for Dior Men, looked to all things crafted, albeit luxed-up and dusted in Dior’s couture expertise. This is, after all, the most storied couture house in LVMH’s firmament, rather than your average Suffolk craft fair.
The designer – a zealous collector himself who collaborates with his favourite artists on his Dior collections – this time called upon Hylton Nel, an 84-year-old South African ceramicist for the collection. The catwalk was strewn with gigantic, whimsical feline forms created by Nel.
“He’s been a friend of mine for 12 years, and recently I visited his place – a six-hour drive from Cape Town – to see his ceramics,” says Jones. “I love bringing friends into the fold of Dior and after doing some very conceptual collections, it felt right to do something crafty and personal.”
That applied to the intarsia knits with abstract animal motifs stitched across them, as well as the buckets jangling with ceramic beads and raw edges on tops and jackets. There was less tailoring and glossy eveningwear than usual, with stitching and macramé effects forming the decoration instead (although, this being Dior, he couldn’t resist a fair amount of crystal embroidery).
The natural palette of sand, sage, rust and dusty pink nodded to the vast expanse of sky at Nel’s South African ranch. “It’s so enormous, and always changing. I wanted to get the feeling of that sky at different times of day,” he says. That setting is a personal one for Jones, a Londoner who grew up in Africa, and he regards it as his spiritual home. There was also a respectful nod to the motifs of Monsieur Dior in the sunflower prints, lest we forget who the real star of the show is in all the celebrity mayhem.
That crafty element was also seen in the ceramic collars – designed for the theatre of the show no doubt, rather than practical enough to make it into shops – while the duster coats and chore jackets called to mind the kind of pieces you might find in an artist’s studio. Call it the “coastal grandad” trend emerging again – all rustic jackets and chunky knits – but on a Côte d’Azur budget.
Of course, the average consumer doesn’t need – or want – a luxury take on homespun clothes at stratospheric prices. But if it causes the Saudi princes and Silicon Valley tech bros who wear these clothes to register the handcrafted element, then that’s a job well done for Jones.
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