This was the scene at Dior Men: a vast box, the color of Dior gray flannel on the outside, black on the inside, with almost airport-size moving walkway sunk into it instead of a runway. The models stood stock-still on the conveyor belt, forming a human frieze in which Kim Jones moved menswear to a brilliantly lit place where a vision of classical cut, youth, and modernity finally gelled. “The idea was they became like statues, standing there as they do in the couture salon,” Jones said.
Tailoring is, of course, the subject du jour in menswear, but how to place a suit in a context that both honors tradition and convinces a new generation is another matter. Jones cracked the conundrum by bringing together the gendered sides of the capabilities that reside under the roof of this house—the Dior uniform of the corporate businessman and politician’s suit, and the draping in 3-D that is the expertise of the women’s haute couture.
It was breathtaking to see how he crystallized the two in a single, elegant gesture of integrating a stole into tailored jackets and formal coats. Half-scarf, half-sash, they attached to the inside of a lapel, crossed the body, wrapped like a cummerbund, and spilled the excess nonchalantly to one side. “That idea came from looking at the cut of a 1955 dress in the Dior archive,” he said. “But I wanted it to have ease and elegance.”
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