Kim Jones and his greatest fashion hits
Written by Adam Bryce
Photography Supplied
The king of collaborations, Kim Jones, causes quite the eruption of excitement with his latest announcement.
Social media, (well, that of the fashion community) blew up last night as Mr Kim Jones announced, via his own Instagram account, that he will be the new artistic director of womenswear at Fendi. Taking the reigns from the late Karl Lagerfeld, the English designer will take the Fendi top spot at while still maintaining his post at Dior Homme. While its the Jones’ impeccable tailoring and fashionability that make him so coveted, he’s also garnered a reputation as the king of the collaboration. Below, we selected some of our favourites.
Known for his love of streetwear and connections within the culture, Kim Jones has played a pivotal role in fashion’s new-found love of genre. While fashion-making masses were taking streetwear cues from all over the show, Jones came along and blew it right out of the water by tagging in Shawn Stüssy to Dior. Oft-regarded as the founder of streetwear, Stüssy brought a decidedly street vibes to the polished Dior aesthetic in one of the most exciting collabs of all time.
If you thought sneaker culture was getting out of hand, Kim Jones managed to take it to the next level. In among the hybrid Dior/Stüssy genius, we saw a Nike Jordans release that began re-selling in excess of us$20,000 within days of their drop.
Fashion collaborations are often a blink-and-miss bore but never so when Jones is involved. In a monster collab, we saw the king bring Loius Vuitton and Supreme together
had become something of a bore, till Kim Jones brought Louis Vuitton and Supreme together. A partnership that hypebeast’s and fashion bloggers had only ever dreamed of had become reality and it didn’t disappoint.
It’s not only high-profile collaborations that Jones nails as the world was instantly besotted with his Judy Blame collaboration. He commissioned the late cult jeweller and stylist to create oversized broaches to emblazon beautifully tailored suiting at Louis Vuitton’s Fall 2015 collection amongst other accessories.
For his soon-to-release Fall 2021 collection for Dior, Jones collaborated with Ghanaian painter Amoako Boafo. And with Jones immaculate knack of incorporating art into garments unparalleled, we are forecasting that this collection go big.
Early on at Dior, Jones gave us an intentions-taster with a cult punk artist, Raymond Pettibon, collab setting the tone for Jones blending of fine art, streetwear and fine tailoring.
If there was ever a case of bringing relevance and hype to a brand, bringing the artist of the moment, Daniel Arsham to Dior was it. Jones brought Arsham and his future relics to Dior in the form of artwork, a book, the set of the summer 2020’s show, the campaign imagery, and of course garments. The future relics concept of Arsham the perfect fit for what Jones was creating at Dior, pieces that would go down as collectables for years to come.
Aligning famous New York artist KAWS with Dior is one thing but the scale in which Jones creates can be impressive on another scale. In this case, the scale was quite literal with a giant KAWS figure installed at the Dior’s Paris fashion week show.
Spring/Summer 2019 wasn’t all KAWS with Jones also tapping Matthew Williams of 1017 ALYX 9SM to create the trademark buckles for the collection. Proving, once again, that Jones’ eye for a killer collaboration is one of his most on point skill.
For his pre-Fall 2019 collection for Dior, Jones teamed with cult Japanese artist Hajime Sorayama. The artist, best known for his erotic portrayals of feminine robots, brought his signature Star Wars/Timecop aesthetic to the collection that Jones labeled retro futuristic.
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