Buffalo style

For Kim Jones, the Dior spring 2024 line offers an ideal terrain for unprecedented stylistic experimentation. Inspired by the creative abundance of Ray Petri’s Buffalo movement, the artistic director designed a collection and a series of capsules for Dior that reinvent men’s sartorial vocabulary.

West London. Early Eighties. A gust of revolution blows through the British fashion landscape, finding its essence in a blend of streetwear and couture, exalting the rebellious spirit of punk. Led by the stylist Ray Petri and the photographer Jamie Morgan, the Buffalo movement unleashed a new aesthetic in magazines, cultivated a taste for subversion and culled influences from the underground scene and streetwear. An ode to individuality and a melting pot of tradition, gender and culture, it has been an inexhaustible source of fascination for Kim Jones since his teens. For the Dior Spring 2024 collection, the Artistic Director draws on this rich heritage, outlining the contours of an ultra-desirable masculine neo-identity.

At the heart of this exercise in style(s), men’s apparel archetypes are reinvented and juxtaposed. The notion of sophistication embraces the everyday with casual shapes, intersecting with the excellence in the Dior ateliers. A utilitarian dimension can be seen in overshirts with multiple pockets or bombers with sleeves delicately embroidered with the name “Dior”. Eternal symbols of the House are revealed in cannage graphics on a quilted down jacket, or the CD Diamond on argyle sweaters. Crystallizing the experimental impulses of the Buffalo attitude, Kim Jones combines sartorial language and sportswear vocabulary, discussing the function of modern tailoring. Classic jackets are deconstructed and fitted with drawstrings; trousers have oversized cuts or are enhanced with half-kilts, echoing the Dior Fall 2023 show, and shirts are transposed into zipped versions.

“I was thinking about people and things i admired in fashion when I was growing up. One of those things was Ray Petri’s Buffalo movement.”

– KIM JONES

A combination of formal and informal – with ease and practicality being paramount – is embodied in a number of exclusive capsules, such as the Dior Icons line. A wardrobe infused with radical, understated luxury, featuring coats, aviator jackets, knits and sweatshirts, emphasizes noble fabrics and neutral hues. Like a tribute to the emblematic blue jeans from the 1980s, pieces in the Dior Denim series reveal various facets of that iconic material. Poised between simplicity and comfort, silhouettes in recycled cotton reveal refined details, including leather patches embossed with the “Dior” signature or the Dior Oblique motif on certain linings.

Perpetuating this fusion of universes, the House initiates an unprecedented collaboration with Otani Workshop, an eminent and singular figure in contemporary art. Infused with joyful energy, the looks resulting from this impassioned dialogue are punctuated by a little green dragon inspired by one of the Japanese ceramist’s works, entitled Seated Monster. That mischievous creature makes its way onto sweaters, short-sleeved t-shirts and bombers, evoking the smart-casual alliance that inhabits the Dior Spring 2024 collection.

An ode to freedom and self-expression, with fashion and art as the starting points for infinite possibilities.

Buffalo style

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