​Dior Men: Ceramic chic

​Kim Jones partnered up ceramic artist Hylton Nel this season and the result was a cool, colorful array of designs and one of his best collections for the house.

At first sight, hard and glazed ceramics are not an obvious inspiration for malleable materials in fashion. But Jones clever approach led to all sorts of wonderful clothes, from the Pearlymen fantasies that opened the show to the glistening speckled brown trenches.
 
The audience of some 1,200 milled around the huge set pre-show, admiring Nel’s sculptures, or versions blown up 30 times from their original on-top-of-the-mantlepiece sizes to three meters high. Lime green puss in boots; powder blue tigers; or wee dogs on a monumental red checkered tea-cosy.

Nel’s ideas extended as far as the ceramic collars and hoods of cashmere hoodies; and the cast’s hair styles. Makeup master Peter Philips working his magic on the glistening hair of the youthful cast.  
 
All leading to a climax as a live version of Kate Bush’s Cloudbusting belted out of the speakers, as the cast moved around the statuary. All built inside a custom-made tent at Val-de-Grâce church.
 
Based in Calitzdorp, a small farming community in South Africa’s Karoon desert, Hylton Nel expresses the raw rough edges of his country and its people’s innate joie de vivre. All apparent in the crowing cocks, standing horses and sprightly Springboks that danced around the prints, or that were embroidered into the farm boots worn by many models.

“What struck me was his knowledge, a world of knowledge from eighteenth-century Staffordshire to Chinese Tang Dynasty pottery and a whole load of ceramics in between… which led me to this collection, where I wanted to do something quite personal,” Jones explained in a note inside a finely printed book of photos of Nel’s world placed on each guest’s seat.
 
Nel’s shamans also dropping in as woolen figurine attached to mini saddle bags; or in a great collection of ceramic creatures that acted as buttons or clasps on high-neck waistcoats.
 
And just when it got a tad to decorative, Jones sent out the crispest of suits and blazers, albeit accessorized with some stiff ceramic collars.
 
“Dior for my real friends,” was how Jones entitled this collection sure to win the house of Dior a whole bunch of new friends, so fine were these clothes.