For those who Keep Up with the Kim Joneses, Wednesday morning was a mini-roller coaster ride of fashion musical chairs, with the announcement that the Dior men’s creative director would take
over as artistic director of womenswear, haute couture, and fur at Fendi.
But he’s not leaving his post at Dior Men—rather, he’ll work across the two brands, both of which are under the LVMH umbrella.
Jones’s appointment was met with great excitement within the fashion community, which has been craving Jones’s mix of subculture and luxury—heretofore only available in the men’s department—in a womenswear offering for years. Insiders were also quick to note that Lagerfeld is taking over for the late Karl Lagerfeld, who designed Fendi’s womenswear from 1965 until his death, and that Jones’s arrangement loosely parallels Lagerfeld’s own shuttling between Fendi and his duties as creative director of Chanel. But it doesn’t necessarily mean that Jones is teed up as Lagerfeld’s heir apparent at Chanel—that brand is independently owned by the Wertheimer family, after all, and longtime Lagerfeld associate Virginie Viard seems safely ensconced there. At least until Marc Jacobs or Phoebe Philo suggest they need something new to do.
Some were skeptical about the appointment of another white male designer at a luxury house in the midst of renewed calls for diversity within fashion’s creative ranks. In a panel discussion hosted by the New York Times fashion director and critic Vanessa Friedman on Wednesday morning, Friedman asked Berluti CEO and LVMH communications head Antoine Arnault whether he’d considered a nonwhite candidate for the job. “To be honest, with this particular nomination, no,” Arnault said. He added that such decisions are often made far in advance—indeed, rumors about Jones’s desire to do women’s collections have flown around the industry for years, including voluminous buzz in 2018 that he would leave his then-post as men’s designer at Louis Vuitton to take over as head designer at Versace. Still, it can’t have escaped the top brass of LVMH that Jones has made an impressive showing flexing all the technical bravado of a couture house that Dior offers, with his sophisticated merging of streetwear and savoir faire arguably second to none. One imagines his fur offerings for Fendi will be rich delicacies.
More importantly, Jones arrives at Fendi with a customer already in the wings. The designer has a longtime posse of top models, counting Naomi Campbell and Kate Moss as close friends who have already worn his Dior menswear designs. His fluency with sneakers and underground streetwear make him a natural fit for a house that has deftly ridden the logomania revival to new heights. Jones’s debut will be the fall 2021 show held in Milan next February.