KEEPING UP WITH KIM JONES
The Dior designer created the hype item of the year — with a little help from Jumpman
“It’s a completely selfish act,” Kim Jones says of the impulse behind the creation of the most lusted-after shoe of the year, and probably next year and possibly the year after: the
Air Jordan 1 OG Dior, Air Dior for short, Jones’s impeccably refined reskin of a 35-year-old design that remains perhaps the single most fetishised sneaker in all of sneakerdom.
“I love them,” Jones says, simply, of his own Air Jordan 1 addiction. “I wear them all the time. It’s my favourite shoe in the world. I wanted to make one. To be able to do it is amazing. That’s the privilege of my job.”
Jones, the Midas-like British artistic director of menswear at Dior, loathes the phrase “streetwear” — it’s used, he says, by “people who aren’t looking properly” — but he acknowledges that one appeal of his work is its high-low aesthetic: ostensibly casual clothes and accessories made to the exacting standards of haute couture, with the most luxurious fabrics and delicate construction. Unlike any before them, these Air Jordans, with their Nike swoosh and Jumpman logo, were handmade in Italy with, Jones says, “all the skill and quality of Dior”. (As king of the unexpected collaboration, Jones was the man behind the internet-breaking, riot-inducing Louis Vuitton x Supreme collection of 2017.)
“When I showed them to Michael Jordan,” he says, of the new shoes, “he was really happy.” Jones’s timing, as ever, is impeccable: thanks to the Netflix documentary series,
The Last Dance, a lockdown sensation, the retired superstar feels as central to pop culture, and men’s style, as he was when he was dominating the NBA with the Chicago Bulls.