Pin It
DIOR MEN'S WINTER 2025_2026_FINALE BY ALFREDO PIOL
Dior Autumn/Winter 2025 menswear finalePhotography by Alfredo Piola. Courtesy of Dior

Dior’s Latest Men’s Show Was One for the Ages

Kim Jones’ Autumn/Winter 2025 Dior menswear show had a soaring, ambitious level of emotion, an absolute conviction in its beauty, and a sense of the depth and nuance of Jones’ connection to the house of Dior, writes Alexander Fury

Lead ImageDior Autumn/Winter 2025 menswear finalePhotography by Alfredo Piola. Courtesy of Dior

“Back to the roots.” That was Kim Jones’ stated take for his Dior Autumn/Winter 2025 menswear collection. It’s a tricky proposition – because Dior’s roots are in mid-20th century haute couture, a war-torn world of faded privilege, rations and restrictions, when Dior stated that with his padded breasts and corseted waists he wanted to “save women from nature” and no-one batted an eyelash at political correctness. Actually, that’s a lie – women protested Dior’s clothes, their profligacy, their extravagance. Back in 1947, when Dior was in its infancy, a bunch of women even turned on a Dior model in the street, attacking her and tearing at clothes they saw as indicative of a return of class division, of the haves and have-nots.

But that actually wasn’t Dior – that was rather the world around him, how his work was perceived (apart from that clanger of a soundbite). What Dior itself stood for is rooted in the art of haute couture, of quality, craft, perfection of line. A love of fashion, an expression of romance and luxury. That was, it seems, what Jones was harking back to with his menswear show, which was probably the most beautiful and monumental he’d ever staged.

The first model, entirely cloaked in black, came out with a knotted satin Stephen Jones ribbon as a blindfold – a reference to an illustration by René Gruau, an artist whose line is indelibly associated with the house. Walking against a white void, the model looked like a charcoal drawing come to life. And that blindfold alone is a stark, beautiful image with a host of allusions. Firing squad? Kinky sex act? But it also made me think of the sensuality rather than the sexuality of haute couture, of the idea of how clothes feel and make you feel rather than how they look. One of the much-vaunted qualities of haute couture is that the clothes, engineered for you alone, feel like a cross between armour and a second skin. Jones worked men’s haute couture pieces into this show, as he did his last Autumn/Winter collection. And in going back to the roots of Dior, the meaning and experience of haute couture is key.

Of course, Jones’ task – no small one – has been and remains to translate that world of feminine haute couture into men’s ready-to-wear. Couture as Dior knew it is kind of dead, honestly – women no longer task their couturiers with dressing them from dawn to dusk, even if they do buy couture pieces. Even the hautest of clients will mix ready-to-wear in with their custom-made wardrobes. Even someone like Mouna Al-Ayoub, whose couture pieces number in the thousands, wears blue jeans.

If anyone has the conviction to resurrect a couture attitude, however, it’s Jones. This collection eschewed any nods to streetwear, to the casual or relaxed. Arch, poised, perfectly executed, it could easily herald a return to formality that has already been inching its way back into men’s fashion – when suits become not straitjackets of conformity, but expressions of individuality. The starting point, Jones said, was Dior’s H-line of 1954 – a loosening of the signature hourglass silhouette that marked the first years of Dior’s house, to an ease that predicted the straight shifts of the 1960s. Ironically, it caused another public outcry, just as Dior’s corsets and reimagined crinolines had in 1947. For Jones, however, ‘H’ meant ‘Homme’, and was easy to translate the eased lines into menswear. Yet, for all the Dior-isms – the knotted bows decorating the back of jackets, cloth pinched into waists, necks shrugged off shoulders – this was a collection born from Jones’ imagination, and his distinct intuition about how people want to dress and feel. It was also an expression of perfection of cut, something Jones has honed after over 20 years in the game. Case in point: the long, Amish-looking skirts worn by women models were actually exquisite coats, wrapped around the waist. They looked as exquisite doing that double-duty as they did worn correctly.

The palette was tight – black, white, pink, a palette of neutrals like old parchments or minty-brown, the foggy Dior grey of rainy Parisian skies – the shapes sharp, visual iconography clear. Yet what resonated, like those blindfolds evinced, was not what you saw but rather how you felt. This show had a soaring, ambitious level of emotion, an absolute conviction in its beauty, and a sense of the depth and nuance of Jones’ connection to the house of Dior, to its history, and its life. He’s aware that he’s writing history with his work – and this Jones Dior show was one for the ages.

More Features
Marianne Faithfull and Warren Ellis
Design & LivingMarianne Faithfull & Jefferson Hack In Conversation
Dior Spring/Summer 2025 Haute Couture
Fashion & Beauty“Creativity Can Transform”: Unpacking Dior Couture’s Caged Beauties
Larry Clark Kids Harmony Korine Skateboarding New York 90s
Art & PhotographyKids at 30: How a Role in Larry Clark’s Cult Film Changed One Actor’s Life