Two-thousand miles from the ateliers in Paris, Dior Homme chose to host its pre-fall collection catwalk among the Pyramids of Giza on Saturday night. With one of the Seven Wonders of the World as a back drop it was, naturally, an epic affair.
Blue lasers cut through the night sky and spotlights lit the edges of the limestone block constructions as a stellar crowd counting Robert Pattinson and girlfriend Suki Waterhouse, Lila Moss, Daniel Kaluuya and Naomi Campbell took their seats for the no holds barred show.
As the silhouette of the first bleach blonde model — clad in a cream sweatshirt and slacks and clasping a sci-fi space helmet — emerged, it became clear creative director Kim Jones was not going to compete with his backdrop in a battle of the most dramatic.
Instead, in line with the previous collections he has shown at the house since his 2018 appointment, the 75 looks stuck to his trademark minimalism rooted in streetwear, with subtle twists that considered the house’s 75 year history.
Stony beige and greige tailoring came with pleated demi-kilts, which a press release noted was based on the Bonne Fortune dress, one of Mr. Dior’s fifties designs. Futuristic touches came in the bulky, ankle protector sneaker boots, stacked industrial belt buckles and 3D printed, lattice breastplates.
“My interest in ancient Egypt is about the stars and the sky,” Jones said in his show notes. “In both the collection and the show there is an idea of ‘guided by the stars’ and what that can entail in many ways. It’s about how the past shapes the future or an idea of the future from the past.”
In action, this was visualised in intergalactic, NASA space telescope prints that came splashed on raincoats. A nod, Jones notes, to the house founder’s “fascination with symbols and superstitions that recur throughout his life and work, one of which is the star.”
Elsewhere, shots of sunset yellows and oranges punctuated an otherwise muted line-up. Jones took a moment to explain the lack of sartorial excess: “nothing negates the need for comfort and practicality: the ultimate luxuries.”
But on location just outside Cairo, extravagnace was not in short supply. It marks the return to the globe-trotting mega-shows typical of resort and pre-fall collections, but at a scale we have seldom seen since the pandemic.
