(Paris) At a time when fashion is a spectacle mixing art, music and performance, Dior has made an almost audacious choice, putting clothing at the center of a parade with futuristic scenography on Friday in Paris.
The models emerged from the basement through hatches, giving an overview of the entire collection from the start, punctuated with bright colors, pink, blue or fluorescent green.
They toured the pavilion installed in the courtyard of the Military School, before disappearing and reappearing thanks to the same system, letting the guests observe each look from several angles in a minimalist frame, Dior gray color.
“The message is simple: it’s all about the clothes,” said Briton Kim Jones, who celebrates his five years at the helm of menswear at Dior with this collection.
By doing so, Dior is positioning itself as the yin of the yang of Louis Vuitton, another house of the luxury giant LVMH.
This is obvious after the debut of Pharrell Williams as creative director of men’s collections at Louis Vuitton, who transformed the Pont-Neuf, the oldest in Paris, into an open-air box where parades followed after-parties. and concerts with a shower of celebrities.
“What I do is always real clothes. I really think about what the client wants. When you work for a big brand, it’s important,” said Kim Jones during a “preview” (collection preview) the day before the show, in a “showroom” of Dior, a stone’s throw from the Arc de Triomphe.
The new collection makes extensive use of Dior’s famous “cannage” motif and spices it up with leopard-print tops inspired by the time when Yves Saint Laurent was the house’s artistic director in the late 1950s.
“I wanted to go back to what Dior was, the New Look, but with a punk edge,” the designer said.
“A subtly subversive message” between the Teddy Boys, a 1950s British subcultural movement of young people wearing Edwardian-inspired clothing who were considered violent, and Malcolm McLaren, producer of the Sex Pistols in the late 1970s .
Tradition and subversion mingle at Dior, just like the masculine and the feminine. The hats worn by these “flower men” evoke Christian Dior’s passion for gardening.
Moccasins with a chunky sole are a star shoe of the show, unless you opt for sock slides.
“We took contributions from Christian Dior, Yves Saint Laurent, Marc Bohan, Gianfranco Ferré and John Galliano, the original five creative directors,” added Kim Jones.
Another snub at Vuitton, which went for a global star with an out-of-fashion profile as creative director to speak to wider audiences.
Kim Jones, himself, was in charge of menswear at Louis Vuitton and helped pioneer the mix of couture and streetwear that led to huge growth for the brand.
In addition to Dior, he is director of women’s and haute couture collections at Fendi, the Italian house for which he paraded Hollywood star Demi Moore, with whom he is very good friends.
The actress, whom he introduces as “my wife” and who likes to be called “Mrs. Jones”, attended the parade. She also caused a stir during the preview by bringing her little chihuahua Pilaf in a canine carrier designed, of course, by Kim Jones.
