Kim Jones - A Tireless Fashion Force

Kim Jones serves as artistic director of Dior Men and Fendi womenswear, but he’s not one to rest on his laurels; with a collaborative capsule with Sacai dropping this month and six ready-to-wear collections in the making, he proves to be a tireless fashion force

- Rosana Lai

Kim Jones is constantly zipping around. He’s just zipped in from holidaying with friends in Kenya—a destination he has frequented since he was a child and loves for its remoteness and abundance of animals—leaving him with freckles floating above a fresh tan. Throughout our conversation at the Dior Men headquarters in Paris, where he has served as artistic director since 2018, the British fashion designer zips from thoughts about Baby Yoda to ideas about elephants. Tomorrow, he will be zipping to Milan to work on his second womenswear show with Fendi, where he has also served as artistic director since September 2020—Fendi had a surprise, now-viral crossover with Versace—before zipping to the Dolomites for his birthday weekend. One gets the sense that Jones is not someone used to standing still.

“I had this conversation during my holiday for about four hours about how this tiny, creative part of my brain has made my entire life and now affected so many people around me,” he says. He leans back behind his desk in a small, unassuming office, with books strewn about and unopened gifts around his ankles. “But I try not to think about it too much because that would drive me mental. I just get on with it.”

That part of Jones’ brain has been responsible for making him one of the most in-demand designers of the last decade, beginning with his tenure as artistic director of menswear at Louis Vuitton from 2011 to 2018, where he launched that explosive Supreme collaboration, and cemented himself as one of the first designers to be able to effortlessly straddle luxury and streetwear.