Oh, the drama of all this.
At Dior’s menswear show on Friday afternoon, models descended a heavenly staircase, trotted around the perimeter and then descended another staircase, disappearing from view. They came from heaven and left for, if not the underworld, then at least the great unknown.
Was this some big metaphor about the reality of being a fashion designer today? Especially one at LVMH, the world’s largest luxury group, owner of Dior?
Maybe it was.
For context, the future of Kim Jones, artistic director of Dior Men, has been the subject of endless (and I mean endlessly) rumors for months, if not years. “Do you think this is his last show?” was the big question passed from reporter to reporter in the front row.
If the apostles of the fashion world were to look for allusive symbols in this show, they would certainly find them. The soundtrack was a song from “McQueen,” the 2018 documentary about Alexander McQueen, a fellow British designer who died by suicide, and which some in the industry have cited as a cautionary tale about the demands it places on designers.
The show’s first model, and a few others who arrived later, had ribbons tied over their eyes, as if to say, “Here I am, blocking out the world.” And when Mr. Jones took his bow during the finale, he walked over to Delphine Arnault, the CEO of Dior and daughter of LVMH chief Bernard Arnault, for all to see.
These actions can mean anything, or of course nothing at all. LVMH has denied or not responded to the rumors.
As for Mr. Jones, during a preview the day before the show, his focus was on the garments. He wanted, he said, to send “a very pure message.”
A nice message about the clothing. This was Mr. Dior. Jones distilled at his most impetuous. Models arrived on those ethereal stairs in bonded leather jackets, without wrinkles; hourglass-shaped sport coats with shoulders as sharp as a guillotine blade; wide trousers with the flounce and bop of a couture dress; and just the perfect gray ribbed sweater. It’s what this reporter would buy if he were lucky one day and won the Mega Millions. Like an Agnes Martin canvas, these are garments whose essentialism makes them so fascinating.
“It’s really all about the structure,” says Mr. Jones, who has worked at Dior for almost seven years. Hours after the show, he received the Légion d’Honneur, France’s highest order of merit. (Other non-French fashion designers who have received the award include a royal group including Karl Lagerfeld, Ralph Lauren and Giorgio Armani).
This Dior collection was scarcer in the areas of bags and shoes, those best-selling outfits that designers can get carried away with, adorning them with models like decorations on a Christmas tree.
“There’s plenty of that on the market,” Mr Jones said. “I just did a very pure Dior.”
As a whole, this collection was a throat-clearing “ahem” from Mr. Jones. Despite all the rumors swirling around him, despite all the times fashion has started to take on a distracting sense of sport – with the chatter on social media about which star is being traded where, who is at the top and who is at the bottom – it reminds us that when it comes to the actual clothes, he is a master of line and form.
