![]() USE OF ICONOGRAPHYĬollaborations frequently rely upon the retooling existing iconography – something recognizable, and reliably popular, made new again. “It was in a lot of ways a sneaker for sneakerheads, and I think that’s why it’s, to this day, one of the most coveted pairs, both in the lows and in the highs,” says Brahm Wachter, VP, Head of Streetwear & Modern Collectables at Sotheby’s. Another promotional video showing Denis in conversation with Sean Wotherspoon on the shoe’s design emphasized that this shoe is not made for luxury snobs, but sneakerheads who will geek out over small details like it being only the second Jordan made in Italy since the Air Jordan 2 in 1986. “It was in a lot of ways a sneaker for sneakerheads, and I think that’s why it’s, to this day, one of the most coveted pairs.”ĭenis joined Dior’s men’s division as head of footwear design under Jones’ appointment as creative director, but he’d never been so visible a part of the brand until the roll out of the Dior Jordan. But Dior’s storytelling around the collaboration also emphasized the work of another key team member: Thibo Denis. Dior’s marketing around the collaboration played up Jones’ personal connection to Jordans in a promotional video for the collection, Jones shows pieces of his extensive Jordan collection that dates back three decades, emphasizing that the collaboration came about because of his love of the shoe and its history, not because an LVMH exec saw a way to capitalize on the unrelenting demand for collaborations (though that may also be true). Here, Jones is not working with an individual artist after all, but a corporate entity. ![]() But with each one, Jones has professed a deep admiration or longstanding connection with his collaborators, whether that’s Daniel Arsham, Yoon Ahn, or Hajime Soraya.Īnd that element is particularly important for two brands as gargantuan as Dior and Jordan, which have grown far beyond their namesake founders. ![]() “Someone would just have to go bigger and better.” AUTHENTIC CONNECTIONīefore joining Dior, Kim Jones had already made a career of collaborations with creatives, artists and brands of all stripes – even to a fault to some of his critics. But I do think it’s possible,” Gibbs says of the possibility of replicating the Dior Jordan’s success. We break down the key elements that made it possible, and that subsequent partnerships would need to capture to produce a modern collectible like the Dior Jordan. But to create a product that appeals to rather than alienates either end of the spectrum requires more than novelty. The Dior Jordan, Gibbs notes, also had the advantage of going first, as in the first collaboration between a major shoe brand like Nike and a European label on par with Dior. “The releases that are the most successful utilize all arrows in their quiver. “All special projects need to be special holistically: unique design, special collaboration partner choice, distribution, and production,” says Chris Gibbs, owner of Union LA. None however have reached the levels of hype as the Dior Jordans, which have fetched more than $10,000 on the secondary market and earned a place in the history books at a presidential inauguration. Supreme, no stranger to high-low mashups, set its sights even higher on a Tiffany collaboration the following year. Prada created perhaps the most obvious sibling to the Dior Jordan with an adidas Superstar collaboration in the fall of 2020. ![]() But that didn’t derail their success, and the luxury-collaboration-industrial-machine as a whole has only become more saturated since. The collaboration faced some setbacks as the COVID-19 pandemic delayed the Dior Jordans’ release from April until July 2020. If anything, Jordan’s involvement legitimized Dior’s place in the new fashion status quo, not the other way around. ![]() The shoe confirmed Dior’s parent company LVMH was not backing away from collaborations, but it also validated a point many knew already: that the basketball sneaker born in the 1980s is as valuable of a brand as the 73-year-old French stalwart. That moment arrived a little over a year later when Dior unveiled an Air Jordan 1 collaboration during the Pre-fall 2020 menswear presentation in Miami. When Kim Jones left Louis Vuitton to take over Dior’s menswear division in 2018, it seemed only a matter of time before the British designer replicated the success of his Louis Vuitton x Supreme collaboration with another blockbuster streetwear crossover. ![]()
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