Friday afternoon in Paris was a big one for the British designer Kim Jones. The artistic director not only presented his latest menswear collection for Dior, he also collected the prestigious Chevalier de la Légion d’honneur, a rarity for someone from outside France. In a fashion moment par excellence, the award was presented to him by Anna Wintour, becoming a knight in the process.
Jones has been at Dior for six years, designing the brand’s menswear collections. During that time, he has explored the brand’s rich archive and also personal interests, including TS Eliot’s The Waste Land and Vanessa Bell’s house Charleston in east Sussex. This show was no different. It took Christian Dior’s mid-50s Ligne H collection as its jump-off, but made Casanova – the 18th-century Italian author known for his multiple relationships with women – its muse.
