Kim Jones’ Dior Men accessories channel the rebellious spirit of the Buffalo Collective

Agitator and establishment meet in Kim Jones’ S/S 2024 Dior Men accessories, inspired at once by the house’s history of haute couture and Ray Petri’s 1980s Buffalo Collective

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Dior Men accessories: Buffalo Shoes and Saddle Bag by Kim Jones
Left, bag, £3,600; shoes, £1,150, both by Dior Men
(Image credit: Photography by Ivona Chrzastek, fashion by Jason Hughes)

Throughout his career so far, British designer Kim Jones has proved adept at channelling the energy of subculture into the vaunted ateliers of Paris’ historic houses. At Dior, a heady infusion of salon and street has seen him celebrate five years as artistic director of the men’s collections – a veritable lifetime in the spinning merry-go-round of creative directors elsewhere.

The S/S 2024 anniversary collection – which references the work of previous Dior creative directors Marc Bohan, Gianfranco Ferré, Yves Saint Laurent and Christian Dior himself – sees footwear inspired by Ray Petri’s Buffalo Collective, a rebellious British creative movement which would come to reshape the landscape of 1980s fashion. Here, Buffalo’s signature chunky, lugged-sole loafer is rendered in silver-toned tweed decorated with the house’s emblematic cannage motif – a symbolic clash of agitator and establishment.

A closer look at Kim Jones’ S/S 2024 Dior Men accessories

Dior Men S/S 2024 saddle bag

Bag, £1,150, by Dior Men

(Image credit: Photography by Ivona Chrzastek, fashion by Jason Hughes))


Meanwhile, the same fabric adorns a new version of the house’s saddle bag, a perennial accessory first introduced by John Galliano in 2000. This functional riff, the ‘Saddle Twin’ bag, comes with a removable handle and adjustable calfskin strap, allowing it to be carried in a multitude of ways: clutched in the hand, as a cross body, or looped over the shoulder.

‘Dior is an haute couture house... at the heart of Dior is silhouette, shape, technique and fabrication of the very highest order. I like to think that in my five years of being here I have never forgotten this,’ Jones said after the show. ’It’s a culture we have inherited from womenswear past and applied to menswear present. And for the first time in our collections, it is a collage of influences from different Dior predecessors and eras we wanted to pay tribute to at once – together with some of our own.’

A version of this article appears in the April 2024 issue of Wallpaper*, available in print, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today.

Set design: Thomas Conant. Photography assistant: Matt Bramston

The Dior Men S/S 2024 collection is available now on dior.com.

dior.com

Dior Men cannage shoes

Shoes, £1,150, by Dior Men

(Image credit: Photography by Ivona Chrzastek, fashion by Jason Hughes)
Jack Moss
Fashion & Beauty Features Director

Jack Moss is the Fashion & Beauty Features Director at Wallpaper*, having joined the team in 2022 as Fashion Features Editor. Previously the digital features editor at AnOther and digital editor at 10 Magazine, he has also contributed to numerous international publications and featured in ‘Dazed: 32 Years Confused: The Covers’, published by Rizzoli. He is particularly interested in the moments when fashion intersects with other creative disciplines – notably art and design – as well as championing a new generation of international talent and reporting from international fashion weeks. Across his career, he has interviewed the fashion industry’s leading figures, including Rick Owens, Pieter Mulier, Jonathan Anderson, Grace Wales Bonner, Christian Lacroix, Kate Moss and Manolo Blahnik.

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