The superstition of the couturier Christian Dior is a lovely, enduring bit of fashion apocrypha. The story goes that while contemplating an offer to work for another designer in Paris, Dior tripped on something on the rue de Faubourg Saint-Honoré. After composing himself, he realised it was a lucky star—a sign he assured himself with before launching his own fashion house a year later.
That relationship with the stars and the celestial was part of the reason Artistic Director Kim Jones took his Fall 2023 presentation for Dior Men to Cairo in Egypt. "My interest in ancient Egypt is about the stars and the sky", he wrote in press notes. "What we inherited from them and what we are still learning from the past."
The show, titled Guided By The Stars, was fittingly an homage to ancient and modern civilisations; and style vernacular contemporary and archival. See for example, richly embroidered couture tunics that explicitly reference some of Christian Dior's most famous and recognisable ball gowns from the '40s and '50s. See also the perhaps unintentional nod to the aesthetic of Dune's Arrakis—a way of dressing for the desert that's both functional and ceremonial. That particular strand of utility and decorum drew a link to the codes of Dior, both from the archives and the present day. Which made for the strongest and most compelling looks in the show, curated here below.
