It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas. Although instead of the usual tinsel and tat that Yuletide so often brings, Dior's Miami pre-fall 2020 show kicked off the season with party suits that could make a Christmas tree look bland. And it was David Beckham's time to shine.
Like an angel at the top of the tree (though a lot more Eighties and on-trend and less flammable), the 44-year-old glimmered in a boxy suit with a silky, silvery finish. Which is par for the course for creative director Kim Jones, who's long amped up Dior Men by melding the shapes of its archive with an aesthetic that's positively futuristic. Last year, that meant laser beam-firing robots and Neo-Tokyo streetwear.
This time round, though, it's louche tailoring, texture clashes and an organic embrace of streetwear (in this instance, a Shawn Stussy collab that Jones has hankered after since he was a teenager). And all of that was set against the backdrop of Miami on the eve of Art Basel: an event in which landmark galleries from North and Latin America, Europe and Asia all exhibit works from movers-and-shakers of modern art.
Made sense for Dior to get a bit creative, then. But off-runway, Beckham found a happy medium: enough sheen to upgrade the party suit, but with all the polish that a formal invitation demands. What's more, the key trend that Jones defined last year remain intact – boxy fit, sturdy trainers et al – and hints at another season in which the best tailoring doesn't look much like the tailoring your dad wore.
Christmas proper might not arrive for a few weeks. But in the form of DB in a Dior DB, it's come a little bit early.
