Kim Jones on Five Years at Dior, and His “New Look” for Pants

Jones pulls out a board of looks to explain the current switch-up. The collection, he explains, is “really about the clothes.” (Which may sound trite, but many menswear collections this week have not been concerned with craftsmanship or real clothes people are expected to wear.) Jones has removed any distraction from technique and silhouette. There are no splashy collaborations for the big anniversary.

Instead Jones has introduced what you might call—at risk of slight overstatement—his own New Look. For five years Jones popularized fully-cut, languid trousers, of the kind that now pool around the sneakers of just about every menswear-obsessed man on the planet. In the arena of pants, perhaps menswear’s most important, Jones is a heavyweight of influence. And now, the first six models in the lineup are wearing simple, dignified blazers over aggressively cropped trousers.

“I was looking at the idea of couture length in the twenties, at the dresses, but then making it as a trouser,” he explains. “So it’s a new proportion for men.” In menswear, a couple inches of tailoring can make all the difference, and after seeing so many giant pants in the last few weeks, the effect of these high waters on the eye is striking—and will surely pull the hemlines of men’s pants toward the sky in seasons to come. (“I see it everywhere, now. But it’s a compliment,” Jones says of his references and silhouettes in other collections.)

Jones also looked at the 1959 collections Yves Saint Laurent designed for Dior, which informed a series of elegant coats in rich cannage embroidery. “You understand the silhouette when you see it from the side,” he says, pulling out an image of a model in profile wearing a gracefully sweeping coat over simple sandals, a bright orange couture beanie atop his head. “When I see it like that, I die,” Jones says. The hats, and a sequence of vibrant polo shirts—a welcome change from the beiges and browns of his almost elegiac fall collection—bring to Jones’s mind Christian Dior’s famous garden. “I thought it was nice to have the colors for summer,” he said.

For the first time, Jones collaged together the work of several of his predecessors in the same line. Fashion geeks on TikTok will no doubt enjoy decoding every last reference, but here’s a start: sumptuous metallic embroideries on blazers and vests recall the Gianfranco Ferré era, with soft textures influenced by Marc Bohan. Leopard print, a callout to Dior’s watershed 1947 collection, appears in short shorts and a sporty vest. “It’s a little punk-y, a little New Wave,” Jones says of the leopard looks. “New Look, New Wave.” John Galliano’s Dior Saddle Bag, which Jones revived as a major men’s status symbol, has been rethought with a smoother, simpler profile and a new quick-release lock. “The bag has been a hit ever since I joined Dior, and we needed to refresh it,” Jones says. “You don’t kill things if they work, but you also know the things that have a lifespan.”

A minor commotion breaks out in the studio as two of Dior’s newest ambassadors, Thai actors Apo and Mile, arrive to meet Jones. “You’re on my Instagram feed all the time, I feel like I know you really well,” he says as the young men, covered in shiny new Dior gear, grin ear-to-ear. A camera crew hovers nearby—Jones’s day is hurtling forward as the clock ticks. On my way out, I ask him what he hopes to accomplish in the next five years at Dior. “I don’t know,” Jones says. “I don’t have time to think about it—I just go.”

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