NEXT OF KIN
Instead of sitting amid the high-vaulted, light-drenched glamour of the Fendi ateliers to talk with Kim Jones about his first collection for the Roman house, we go for a country walk in Sussex on an awfully grey day prior to lockdown, blustery and bleak with thick mists rendering it almost dark in mid-afternoon. We’re a long way from the Italian capital, where scores of seamstresses are in the process of weaving lattices of pearls and ornately embroidering couture gowns for his upcoming debut, but, nonetheless, it soon makes a lovely sort of sense. Jones recently bought a holiday home here, in the quiet village of Rodmell – a stone’s throw from the house where he spent much of his upbringing, and a few doors down from Virginia Woolf’s cottage – and he’s brought me here to give me a tour of his childhood. “As a teenager, I spent a lot of time cycling round all these villages,” he smiles, sidestepping a growling tractor. “This first collection feels almost autobiographical. What I’m referencing feels really personal.”
While this is Jones’s first womenswear collection, he has stood at the forefront of fashion for more than a decade: his, thus far, three-year tenure as artistic director of menswear at Dior – where he has translated the feminine romance of the founder’s codes into elegant tailoring and a boldly contemporary sensibility – has already earned him almost every
