Throughout his career so far, British designer Kim Jones has proved adept at channelling the energy of subculture into the vaunted ateliers of Paris’ historic houses. At Dior, a heady infusion of salon and street has seen him celebrate five years as artistic director of the men’s collections – a veritable lifetime in the spinning merry-go-round of creative directors elsewhere.
The S/S 2024 anniversary collection – which references the work of previous Dior creative directors Marc Bohan, Gianfranco Ferré, Yves Saint Laurent and Christian Dior himself – sees footwear inspired by Ray Petri’s Buffalo Collective, a rebellious British creative movement which would come to reshape the landscape of 1980s fashion. Here, Buffalo’s signature chunky, lugged-sole loafer is rendered in silver-toned tweed decorated with the house’s emblematic cannage motif – a symbolic clash of agitator and establishment.
A closer look at Kim Jones’ S/S 2024 Dior Men accessories
Meanwhile, the same fabric adorns a new version of the house’s saddle bag, a perennial accessory first introduced by John Galliano in 2000. This functional riff, the ‘Saddle Twin’ bag, comes with a removable handle and adjustable calfskin strap, allowing it to be carried in a multitude of ways: clutched in the hand, as a cross body, or looped over the shoulder.
‘Dior is an haute couture house... at the heart of Dior is silhouette, shape, technique and fabrication of the very highest order. I like to think that in my five years of being here I have never forgotten this,’ Jones said after the show. ’It’s a culture we have inherited from womenswear past and applied to menswear present. And for the first time in our collections, it is a collage of influences from different Dior predecessors and eras we wanted to pay tribute to at once – together with some of our own.’
A version of this article appears in the April 2024 issue of Wallpaper*, available in print, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today.
Set design: Thomas Conant. Photography assistant: Matt Bramston
The Dior Men S/S 2024 collection is available now on dior.com.
