From the silhouettes of Yves Saint Laurent to the embroideries of Gianfranco Ferré; the cabochons of Monsieur Dior to the textures of Marc Bohan. A collage of influences and pop iconography takes shape in a mechanical garden of ‘hommes fleurs’, simultaneously embracing tradition and subversion: from the feminine to the masculine; from the salon to the street; from the New Look to the New Wave. Dior Men’s Summer 2024 collection is an amalgam of autobiographies joins Kim Jones’ own in this, his fifth-anniversary collection and show at Dior. While once more, it is Yves Saint Laurent’s silhouettes that hold sway and are mainly drawn upon for the Artistic Director’s Summer offering, transposed and transformed. The men’s histories intertwine with a melding of the masculine and feminine, with British tailoring traditions and materials meeting that of the haute couture tailleur, revealing the roots of womenswear fabrications in the men’s world after all.
Infusing all is a sense of crisp, playful modernity, practicality and ease. There is a flirting with pop excess that meets a combination of the formal and the casual in individual garments, a uniting of luxury with utility. Here, the appearance of simple and archetypal menswear items, such as the Harrington, the polo, the crew neck and the cardigan, is transformed from the ordinary to the extraordinary through symbolic techniques that traverse time and styles at Dior: tweeds, embroideries and cannage.
