There’s change afoot in some of fashion’s biggest houses right now. Riccardo Tisci announced his new release strategy for Burberry, one that sees items dropped in 24-hour cycles over the course of the season. Hedi Slimane might have just released the first look at Celine menswear. Now, Dior have announced that Kim Jones will show their first ever men’s pre-fall collection. The show will take place on 30 November in Tokyo, and will coincide with a pop-up shop at Isetan, a department store in Tokyo’s Shinjuku district, selling Kim’s first Dior Homme collection.
“A fashion show in Tokyo is the best way to present and celebrate my first Dior pre-fall men’s show. Japan is a magical country that I know quite well and that I love particularly for its incredible and unique culture, history and nature, which have always been very fascinating and a great source of inspiration to me,” Jones said in a statement, as reported in WWD.
Kim Jones has long been enamoured with and inspired by Japan. Speaking to i-D Japan back in 2016, he discussed its influence on his designs in his previous role as artistic director of Louis Vuitton menswear. “I love Japanese fabrics. You can really see the craftsmanship and the pride that goes into them. Lots of care is taken in the production process and the technical quality is very good, which really appeals to me. I used to work for a company called Gimme5 when I was at university, and that’s where I met Jun Takahashi, Hiroshi Fujiwara and Nigo. I guess that must have been back in about 1999. Of course, I already knew about Japanese brands like Comme des Garçons and Yohji Yamamoto, and I liked them a lot… they were totally free and unrestricted, which seemed absolutely revolutionary to me. I’ve had a lot of respect for those guys since way back then.”
Dior has long had ties with Japan. When Maria Grazia Chiuri showed her first couture collection in 2017 in Tokyo to celebrate the launch of a new store in the city’s Ginza Six complex, she added eight new looks based around “le jardin japonais” — Japanese gardens — using signature prints of pink cherry blossoms, and stitching “Jardin Japonais, Christian Dior, 1953” into the garments. These were a reference to Christian Dior’s love of the country, the couturier often incorporating Japanese elements into his designs, as well as showing his collections in cities around the country in the 50s.
