HE’S THE HARDEST-WORKING MAN IN FASHION, AND THE MOST POWERFUL BRITISH DESIGNER. NOW, KIM JONES IS READY TO USE HIS PLATFORM TO DOMORE. AS HIS LATEST FENDI COLLABORATION LAUNCHES, HE SITS DOWN WITH KENYA HUNT TO TALK FRIENDSHIP AND THE FUTURE
WHEN KIM JONES WAS CREATIVE DIRECTOR OF LOUIS VUITTON menswear in the 2010s, he lived in Paris, where he’d find himself going to the Yves Saint Laurent store most Saturdays (back before the brand’s name was shortened to Saint Laurent.) It was a relatively buoyant, feel-good time for fashion. A time when much of the Western world was climbing out of a global recession; easing into a period of spending, smart phones, and social media; and settling into the era of Beyoncé and Taylor Swift. ‘I only wore Saint Laurent clothes at that point – apart from the things I made myself,’ he says.
Jones was a fan of the creative director at the time, Stefano Pilati, a man who to this day is viewed as a designer’s designer, revered by many of the industry’s most revered talents. ‘He was always one of my favourites,’ Jones says, before recalling Pilati’s autumn/winter 2009 YSL collection, a leather-filled exercise in rigour and sensuality with boyishly sexy shirts, dresses, moto jackets and jumpsuits, which Jones includes on his shortlist of top runway shows ever. Why? ‘Everything was perfect and in place – the music, the set, the hair, the make-up, the clothes,’ he says. ‘He captured a moment in time.’
Many could say the same of Jones, who was solidifying his status as the menswear world’s brightest star, creating sellout collections that struck a then-novel balance between impossibly cool streetwear and luxurious tailoring. He had become that rare designer who not only chronicled a culture, effectively pulling the world of the hypebeast into luxury fashion’s gilded halls, but popularised a shift in tone that would reverberate throughout the industry for years to come.
Since then, Jones has become a man with an ever-growing list of superlatives: he is the most powerful British designer working today, as creative director of menswear for Dior and womenswear and couture for Fendi. He is also among the country’s most garlanded designers, with an Order of the British Empire, multiple British Fashion Awards and a recent ELLE Style Award for Designer of the Year 2023, to name a few. Jones might not have the kind of household-name recognisability that reaches far beyond the fashion grid, like his Fendi predecessor Karl Lagerfeld, or friend Donatella Versace. But very few designers working now enjoy the level of influenc
