Kim Jones, the Creative Director for Dior Men, may be one of today’s most quintessentially contemporary designers, armed with a holistic global vision, an innate understanding of what makes a fashion “moment”—taking your bow with Vuitton-trench coated Kate and Naomi; sending stock-still models down a moving conveyor belt runway—and the ability to assemble and inspire a world-class team of collaborators across all divisions, from star milliner Stephen Jones and jewelry maven Yoon Ahn, to an impressive in-house team of textile researchers and design associates.
Jones’s global vision is in his DNA: As a child, he followed his father’s work as a hydrogeologist, which took the family to places such as Ecuador, Botswana, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Kenya, and the Caribbean, where he grew up surrounded by people who used fabulous clothing as self-expression. “The very good designers are those who see things, travel the world, and are interested,” Jones has said. “That’s what makes them successful. It makes you understand what you need to do.” By his reckoning, his travels have included some one hundred trips to Tokyo, a city notable for its embrace of fashion and innovation in all fields, not least its early championing of streetwear, a prime interest of Jones’s that perhaps reached its apotheosis in his internet-breaking Fall 2017 Louis Vuitton collaboration with Supreme.
Jones studied at Central Saint Martins under the late Louise Wilson, the legendarily exacting and inspirational tutor whose dazzling alumni stable includes Erdem Moralioglu, Christopher Kane, Mary Katrantzou, Simone Rocha, and Jonathan Saunders. “Louise made me believe in myself and helped me realize what I wanted to do…” says Jones, “which made me quite brave…. She was a great listener and giver of advice, as well as being incredibly funny.”
Jones graduated from Central Saint Martins in 2002—John Galliano bought half his thesis collection—and established his eponymous brand a year later, which he supported with numerous consultancies. Lee McQueen took an interest in what he was doing and became something of a mentor and a friend.
In 2008, Jones was appointed Creative Director of Dunhill, which he described then as “sort of a sleeping beauty.” His work there garnered him the British Fashion Council’s Menswear Designer of the Year Award. The global luxury groups were watching and circling, and in 2011, Jones assumed the same position at Louis Vuitton Men’s, a brand with wanderlust in its soul. In 2018, he became the Creative Director of Dior Homme, promptly rechristening it Dior Men. His debut collection deftly exemplified his powerful blending of the contemporary zeitgeist with Christian Dior’s legacy—including that couturier’s passion for flowers, his romantic embrace of the ancien regime, his interest in the Far East as a source of inspiration, and his relationship with contemporary artists. Prince Nikolai of Denmark opened the show in powder blue and white (Jones’s mother is Danish), circling a Brobdingnagian flower statue created with 70,000 roses and peonies by the artist KAWS, and Jones took his bow with his jewelry designer (and Ambush co-founder) Yoon Ahn. Jones had already dressed his first client, David Beckham, in formal morning-suit attire for Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s wedding.
Jones continues to mine the archives for icons that could be reimagined as contemporary classics—John Galliano’s 1999 saddle bag, the toile de jouy that Christian Dior used in his first boutique, and that designer’s 1955 Oblique Line, for instance. His collaborators have included artists Alasdair McLellan and Luke Smalley and Kanye West, whom he has cited as a profound influence and muse. Jones admitted to Nick Jonas that “all my collections start with a piece of music that I’m thinking about.” His musical collaborators have also included Nile Rodgers, Giorgio Moroder, Diplo, and Michael Stipe, and Jones has a 6,000-piece collection of rare vinyl: “If it’s not on CDs, not on the internet, you have to go back to the source,” he explains, “which is what I do a lot with my work, really.”
Jones was turned on to fashion at the age of 14, when his sister bequeathed him her collection of i.D magazines, and he remains intensely interested in the brilliantly imaginative and innovative designs of the fashion stars of 1980s London clubland that the magazine championed at a period in which music, fashion, and art fused as one—Leigh Bowery, Rachel Auburn, Christopher Nemeth, Mr. Pearl, Vivienne Westwood, and Judy Blame (with whom he collaborated), among them. They are all represented in Jones’s impressively curated personal collection.
Above all, his work comes together thanks to “a team of people around me who are family” says Jones. “That’s what Dior has always been, and it’s important to keep the spirit.”
Expect to hear more about Kim Jones’s inspirations, practice, and process when Vogue’s Forces of Fashion conference on October 10 and 11 in New York City finds us in conversation.
