Just a week ago, Kim Jones marched to an ice rink in Paris and took an arc at the end of his last show as a creative director of the men at Dior.
That show would be his last.
On Friday, Mr. Jones, a British fashion designer who has held that role since 2018, announced that he left the brand.
“It was a true honor to have been able to create my collections within the house of Dior, a symbol of absolute excellence. I expressed my deep gratitude to my studio and the studios who accompanied me on this wonderful journey, “Mr. Jones said in a press release announced his departure.
In the statement, Delphine Arnault, the Chief Executive of Dior, thanked Mr. Jones for his ‘remarkable work’.
“With all his talent and creativity, he constantly reinterpreted the heritage of the house with real freedom of tone and surprising, highly desirable artistic collaborations,” said Mrs. Arnault.
It was only a week ago, in the hours after the last Dior show of Mr. Jones, that Mrs. Arnault and her brother Antoine were in the audience with members of the staff of Mr. Jones, designers such as ZAC Posen and celebrities including Kieran Culkin to view MR. In the light of Het Laatste Nieuws, that prize could be seen as the arch that was linked around his design career at Dior.
The departure did not seem to be a mutual decision, because the press release emphasized that Mr Jones “had decided to leave his position”, a phrasing that will certainly not be overlooked by the rumormongers of the fashion world.
The news about the departure of Mr. Jones finally comes bundled in a fabric cloud of gossip about what the next one is for him and for Dior. For weeks, the wider fashion world buzzes with the idea that Jonathan Anderson, a colleague designer in the LVMH stable, may be set to take the reins of both men and women’s clothing in Dior. From now on, Maria Grazia Chiuri will remain the creative director of the women and the press release announcing Mr Jones’ departure, did not comment on future plans for the brand.
Mr Jones on Dior’s print was considerable. His first official design for the label was a soft dressing gown and pants worn by David Beckham for the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. It was a whole way to attract the attention of the audience.
At Dior, Mr. Jones introduced Couture for Men, seducing the flashy and happiness with Kralentunics and operate robes that pushed into the six digits. And he sold a mountain chain worth sloping, sloping sneakers and collaborative Birkenstock muke fibers while raising the men’s activities to a new height.
Mr. Jones offered a sensual view of men’s clothing at Dior. It would be wrong to say that his designs were sex debt; On the contrary, they have picked generous strands from the women’s department. During his term of office on the label, his interest in archetypal men’s clothing silhouettes such as suits with double breasts, overcoats and bombers.
His color schemes surround tender pinks, icy shades and palate-cleaning whites. He fought with Roughod -Tweeds in favor of delicate textiles, who manifests itself in tips and silk blazers. He has transferred Dior’s well -formed industry -sporting in the line of his men.
Van Go were collaborations a crucial pillar of the Dior of Mr. Jones. His very first collection was completed by a collaboration with the American artist Kaws; He even had Kaws’ characteristic cartoon figure ‘companion’, the size of an apartment building, looming over the runway.
Mr Jones, an avid art collector, designed clothing with a Rangy selection of artists and celebrities, including Daniel Arsham, Kenny Scharf, Raymond Pettibon, Hylton Nel and even Travis Scott. And he liked to make room at the top of Dior for designers he honored – young and old. He picked Shawn Stussy from the relative pension to work together in his pre-Fall 2020 collection and later tapped the California Wunderkind Eli Russell Linetz for a collection of 2023 (Mr. Jones was also a champion of Virgil Abloh and left him for years Sleeping on the couch in his house in London before Mr.
Mr. Jones graduated from Central Saint Martins in London and led his own label before he became creative director of the loyal British label Dunhill. Three years later he caught the attention of LVMH and was appointed style director of men’s clothing near Louis near Louis Vuitton. His collections, which often used from his travels out of season, merging, the utilitarian and the fantastic. A collaboration in 2017 with the Streetwear label Supreme opened the door, for good and for bad, until our current moment, when hype and luxury are almost brought together.
In 2020, Mr Jones became artistic director of Women at Fendi, who took a position of Karl Lagerfeld to his death. Mr. Jones’s Fendi was cool by critics and never seemed to flee. He was withdrawn from the role last October.
His final collection for Dior was a backticulation of those principles – splendor, femininity and pugnacity – which had made his vision so mandatory in 2018. There were no collaborations, no wood images that spread the runway to distract, only pieces like one Glassy glassy Bonded Leather jacket, an hourglass-and-wandered jacket in flawless ivory and elephant pants that seemed to have been sculpted, not sewn.
At the end, Mr. left Jones not with a bang, but with some beauty.
