Dior Spring-Summer 2025, Among Friends

The invitation for Dior’s Spring-Summer 2025 runway show in Paris was to the point: “Dior, for my real friends.” Kim Jones’ real friends certainly turned out in style for the designer, with the likes of Robert Pattinson, longtime muse Kate Moss, fellow designers Stefano Pilati and Jeremy Scott, Bad Bunny, and Maluma in attendance, among others. Among friends inside the tranquil confines of Val-de-Grâce, Kim Jones dropped any semblance of pretension, going as far as being a bit tongue in cheek.

The show opened with applause — part of a more rock and roll soundtrack — as the first model made their way down the runway, between a series of towering Hylton Nel ceramic sculptures of cats. Nel, a South African ceramist, was Kim Jones’ point of reference for the Spring-Summer 2025 collection. While Nel’s work inspired and featured on garments, Jones sought to use the collection to emphasize “elements of craft, the skills of the Ateliers and artisans,” while considering what it means to give one’s life to a single creative endeavour: ceramics or clothes, say.

A suit with a standing collar was intricately finished with studded embroidery to create floral and bird motifs, with the model holding one of Nel’s sculptures, his head clad in a cloche hat (not a bucket!) made in collaboration between Stephen Jones and South African company Earth Age. The cloche hats featured throughout the collection, with each hand-crocheted and finished with dangling ceramic beads, applied in Paris–different ateliers, different companies, different countries, coming together for a single, thoughtful piece.

Nel’s iconography featured on tailoring, sweaters, bags and more, infusing the collection with a playful edge and some models carried his ceramics down the runway — one imagines they might feature as part of Dior’s homeware collection this time next year. A cream knit sweater with a blue dog, rendered in almost child-like simplicity, was particularly fun.

Despite a generally more laid back atmosphere, for a second consecutive season, Kim Jones leaned on Dior’s illustrious history as a couture house. After introducing an haute couture equivalent for men in January, Jones followed that up by delving in the Maison’s archive to pull out two Yves Saint-Laurent designs. In the first instance, the scarf collar that runs throughout the collection is a nod to Dior’s Fall-Winter 1960 collection. Jones has modernized it, turning it into a faux-ceramic structure, finished with Nel’s distinct figures. The artisanal process to create the mock ceramic collars took months to achieve. The most stunning accomplishment was turning an incomplete Saint-Laurent sketch from 1958 into a finished garment — the first time the design has ever been completed — and taking inspiration from the silhouette for the broader tailoring offering.

On that note, Jones’ famous double-breasted jackets were conspicuous in their absence. Instead of the Oblique, Jones served up slightly more casual options, preferring single-breasted jackets — often worn with the collar upturned — that riffed as much on traditional tailoring as they did on workwear jackets. It felt fitting for the collection; one could easily imagine Nel working in the white jacket from Look 15, for example. By melding workwear and tailoring, Jones brought a hardiness to the suit jackets and a delicate side to the chore coats.

The idea of bringing a humility to couture-worthy savoir-faire — or, conversely, of elevating humble menswear staples — is a staple of Jones’ work and this collection was no different in that regard. The best example was arguably the footwear. The standout silhouette from the collection was the clog, the ultimate work shoe, transformed here with luxurious materials like beech wood and calf leather, each pair crafted by hand and available as boots and lace up shoes. 

On the whole, the collection hit all the right notes. It stayed true to both Dior’s and Jones’ identity, but brought a lightness and fluidity, as well. Silhouettes, like that of the Saddle Bag, were softened and rendered more curvilinear. The palette felt warm but light, suffused with delicate beiges and browns, soft creams, shimmering greens and a range of blues that ran the gamut from sea to sky. 

The show opened with applause and it ended with applause, too. Kim Jones’ friends left happy — this was Dior, for them.

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