Kim Jones&rsquo; Spring/Summer 2023 collection takes a trip to the heart of Sussex and is a historical homage to the widely influential Bloomsbury Group.

For&nbsp;Dior Men&rsquo;s Spring/Summer 2023 collection, Creative Director&nbsp;Kim Jones&nbsp;evoked memories of summers in Granville&mdash;a port town on the coast of Normandy, where Christian Dior himself spent his childhood&mdash;and the English gardens of&nbsp;Sussex, where Jones spent time growing up. More precisely, near Lewes, where a circle of&nbsp;artists, writers, intellectuals, and philosophers known as the Bloomsbury Group met often during the first half of the&nbsp;20th century.

There was the&nbsp;post-impressionist&nbsp;artist Duncan Grant, whose work encompassed portraits, still lifes, and landscapes. Around him gathered a constellation of talents&mdash;the painter Vanessa Bell and her sister, the iconic, trailblazing Modernist writer Virginia Woolf; the painter and art critic Roger Fry; the economist John Maynard Keynes, one of Grant&rsquo;s great loves; and more. The group held salons at Charleston Farmhouse&mdash;the home and studio of Bell and Grant&mdash;and at Monk&rsquo;s House, where Woolf lived, a few miles away. Freed from Victorian ideals and norms, the group shifted their focus to the pursuit of pleasure and emphasized the importance of personal relationships. Their politics were liberal, and the&nbsp;landscape&nbsp;in which they discussed their ideas was lush, if a bit overgrown. &ldquo;The Bloomsbury Group in total were intellectually a force to be reckoned with, yet at the same time their&nbsp;paintings&nbsp;are decorative and easy to live with. As time goes by they have become friends and part of the fabric of living,&rdquo; says singer Bryan Ferry, who collects works from the group.

Ferry, a friend of the house of&nbsp;Dior&nbsp;and a living icon of English music lore, discovered the Bloomsbury Group on a trip to New York City. In the 1970s, Ferry visited former classmate and artist Mark Lancaster stateside when he was on tour. At the time, Lancaster worked with&nbsp;Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, and Merce Cunningham, while Ferry had just purchased an older house back in England. Lancaster showed him a portrait of Vanessa Bell, and the rest is history. &ldquo;The first picture I acquired was a Duncan Grant still life, which set the tone for the rest of the collection. It was mainly Bloomsbury artists but also work by their contemporaries working in London at that time, such as Sickert, John, Nevinson, Wyndham, Lewis, and Orpen. They were all artists I&rsquo;d read about as a student, but had not been within my field of interest until I began collecting.&rdquo;

Art of all forms often influences&nbsp;fashion, and this is not the first time Jones has referenced 20th-century writers in his work. His Fall/Winter 2022 collection for Dior Men was inspired by the&nbsp;Beat Generation, and was part runway show, part exhibition of rare books and manuscripts from the likes of Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg. It is with this same enthusiasm that Jones evoked the English countryside and the works of Woolf&mdash;with luminous silhouettes,&nbsp;floral&nbsp;motifs, pastel hues, sensual cuts, and bucolic poetry.

The collection combined technical&nbsp;fabrics&nbsp;with relaxed tailoring; models walked through a runway-turned-garden in double-layer shorts, zip-up&nbsp;vests, sharp blazers, and gardening hats. A soft color palette of grey, rose, khaki, and powdery blue nodded to Jones&rsquo; romantic inspirations, while elements of Grant&rsquo;s vibrant paintings were embroidered on sweaters and sheer tops. In September 2023, some of the garments will be featured in an exhibition by the Charleston Trust, which opened up their archives to Jones as he was designing the collection. The exhibition, titled Bring No Clothes: Bloomsbury &amp; Fashion and curated by fashion critic and author Charlie Porter, will be the first major exhibition on the fashion of the Bloomsbury Group.

"The Bloomsbury Group in total were intellectually a force to be reckoned with"

&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve long admired the house of Dior for its marvelous&nbsp;artistic&nbsp;creations, and Kim Jones is an incredible talent working in a highly competitive field. Like the Bloomsbury group of artists, he has a very strong work ethic, and like them he draws inspiration from many sources,&rdquo; says Ferry. &ldquo;I imagine that Kim, like me, finds a beautiful sense of calm in their work. It&rsquo;s interesting how we&rsquo;ve both embraced the art of a century ago, which seems so far removed from the fast-paced worlds of fashion and&nbsp;music. Artists tend to thrive on contrast.&rdquo;

Dior Men's Spring/Summer 2023 Collection Heads to the Countryside

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