Fashion
Forget the Rumor Mill. These Were Just Some Really Great Clothes.
Kim Jones of Dior remains the subject of rampant speculation in the fashion industry, but at his latest runway show, he reaffirmed his men’s wear mastery.
Oh, the drama of it all.
At the Dior men’s wear show on Friday afternoon, models trooped down a celestial flight of stairs, trotted around the perimeter and then descended another flight of stairs, disappearing out of view. They arrived from heaven and departed into, if not the netherworld, at least the great unknown.
Was this some grand metaphor about the realities of being a fashion designer in today’s age? Especially one at LVMH, the world’s largest luxury group, which owns Dior?
Perhaps it was.
For context: The future of Kim Jones, the Dior Men’s artistic director, has been the subject of endless (and I mean endless) rumors for months, if not years. “Do you think this is his last show?” was the great question passed from reporter to reporter in the front row.
If the apostles of the fashion world went looking for allusive symbols in this show, they could certainly find them. The soundtrack was a song from “McQueen,” the 2018 documentary about Alexander McQueen, a fellow British designer who died by suicide, and who some in the industry cite as a cautionary tale about its demands on designers.
The show’s first model, and a few others arriving later, had ribbons tied over their eyes, as if to say, “Here I am, blocking out the world.” And when Mr. Jones took his bow at the finale, he walked over to embrace Delphine Arnault, the Dior chief executive and daughter of the LVMH chief Bernard Arnault, for all to see.
These acts could mean everything or, of course, nothing at all. LVMH has either denied or not answered the rumors.
