Some fashion shows offer what the industry refers to as 'a moment'. Kim Jones, men’s artistic director at Dior, has served up a series of moments in his career, and his Autumn/Winter 2020 collection – his fourth main seasonal collection since he arrived at the brand – delivered yet another.
The show was on a Friday and the Esquire team had been in town since the Wednesday, so we must have driven past the vast grey box at the eastern edge of Place de la Concorde ten or 20 times before we got to see inside. The superstructure loomed over the Jardins des Tuileries and the Dior show loomed over Paris Fashion Week. When the night finally came, members of Jones’s glittering circle supported en mass. Pattinson, Delevigne, Aboa, Sabbat, Diplo, Robyn (those two don’t do surnames) and three Beckhams, amongst others, were in attendance alongside several thousand less exciting people.
In his short time at Dior, Jones has made the male side of the brand a behemoth. He has overseen widespread critical acclaim, major collabs – Rimowa, Kaws, Shawn Stussy and now Air Jordan – huge commercial success and a repositioning of the brand to the centre of the zeitgeist. In terms of creative influence, Jones is almost at a point where he can decide how men will be dressing in the coming months and years. So take note: by the end of 2020, you’ll be wearing grey tailoring, paisley prints and bi-colour bomber jackets.
Of course, it’s not as simple as that. Jones’s designs are relatively classic, in line with the commandments of menswear, but it’s the detail where his style comes through. Nothing is ever as simple as it seems. The A/W '20 collection features reworkings of the pillars: camel overcoats, blue blazers and business shirts, cable knit sweaters, Chelsea boots, denim jackets. Even the humble tie gets Jones’d, switched for a narrow handkerchief threaded through a pearlescent woggle (you know, the thing from cub scouts). Bomber jackets are split with a zip all the way up the back, raincoats reimagined in laser-cut leather, field jackets fitted with a plane-seat buckle. From far away, everything is what you know, up close it is everything that you don’t.
Inspiration came from Judy Blame, the influential stylist, designer and icon who rose to prominence via his own mastery of detail. Blame was known for cherry-picking things discarded by others (bottle tops, buttons, safety pins) and arranging them as artful adornments to clothing. Jones’s new collection openly references Blame and pays homage with similar detailing, albeit with purpose built accoutrements made by the maison, rather than found on the banks of the Thames, one of Blame’s hunting grounds.
Models navigated a runway fitted with three large perspex boxes, each filled with smoke that intermittently changed colour between red, white and blue. Aesthetically, it made sense for a storied French brand showing in Paris. But so too for the Brit at the helm, and the collection based on the work of another. Speaking about the production, milliner and long-time Kim Jones collaborator Stephen Jones said the collection “really had that British sensibility of craft and art.” Why is it a British sensibility? “Because the aristocrat and the punk can be friends, but only in England.”
