Designer Kim Jones has wasted no time making his mark on Dior since being appointed the artistic director of menswear for the iconic French label back in 2018. Since then, Dior's menswear has expanded and modernized to include reinvigorated suiting, next-level accessories, and just a couple of unexpected collaborators. This year alone, Jones tapped artists from the worlds of streetwear and punk rock (KAWS and Raymond Pettibon, respectively) for eye-popping collections. Now, the designer has set his sights on his next collaborator: Stüssy—and in particular, the involvement of its founder Shawn Stussy, who left the namesake brand back in 1996.
Jones is no stranger to high-profile streetwear collaborations. He was the mastermind behind the teaming up of two industry titans—Louis Vuitton and Supreme—for a collection worthy of fashion's history books. In a teaser clip posted on the Dior Instagram account, Stüssy's hallmark lettering and palm trees swirl into Technicolor landscapes, playing heavy into the beloved Californian brand's sun-soaked surf heritage. Make no mistake: a Dior x Stüssy collection is a big deal in of itself, but the fact that the brand's namesake founder came out of "retirement" to work on the collaboration only adds more hype up into the mix. The collection is set to be unveiled tonight at Dior's Pre-Fall 2020 Menswear show in Miami and one can expect to see the brand’s iconic lettering in full effect.
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This collaboration is also another sign of the direction that Dior and other like-minded luxury brands are headed—and it's still towards streetwear. Much has been said and blogged about streetwear's infiltration of fashion and when the so-called "streetwear bubble" will burst, but there seem to be no signs of things slowing doing just yet. (Just last week, Prada and Adidas announced a partnership and unveiled some limited-edition sneakers.) As the collab marketplace gets more and more oversaturated, brands will have to swing for the fences to make a collaboration feel like an actual effort and more important than just another mixing of logos and a press release. And if any two people can hit the mark of a grail-level collaboration, it's Kim Jones and Shawn Stussy. Stay tuned for more.
