“When I was starting out as a milliner,” Jones explained, “I wasn’t making hats for fashion shows, I was making hats for people to go out to clubs. So they had to be quite small hats because otherwise you couldn’t dance in them. They’re made for going out in a club and having fun”. For Dior, he explained, “the brief insisted that you had to be able to dance in them and probably have sex in them too. And maybe they’ll fall off at the height of passion,” he laughed.
As it were, the beret was already a part of Christian Dior’s world in 1947: The designer’s early sketches would often reveal a flick of the pencil crowning his clothing, a gesture which could be interpreted as a beret. Prior to becoming a dress designer, Christian Dior drew hats and sold his illustrations to various milliners in Paris. “They were rarely this very big thing,” said Jones. “That ‘very big thing’ was supposed to denote glamour and voluptuousness. And in fact, even when he showed his first collection, it was a small, contained hat which was a beret or a development of a beret”.
For the first time for Dior, Jones interpreted a variation of the beret as a Tambourin shape: A squared, rather geometrical take on the classic French accessory far from the Basque beret, the beret of Che Guevara, or that of the Revolution. More sophisticated in shape, its angular extremities carry more sense than a regular beret. “This is the shape that I really wanted to do for Kim as I know that he loves berets and the simplicity of them”. A simple adornment on the one hand, and a canvas for Kenny Scharf’s vibrant faces and traditional Chinese beadwork, a key component of the collection.
When it comes to working with an haute couture house, Stephen Jones insists on the importance of communication and friendship. This starts by researching the shape of the hat the designer or client wears themselves. Having started his career with made-to-measure, Jones’ earliest hats were not made for distribution but made specifically for his first clients. “My first clients were men, whether it was Boy George or Spandau Ballet or Duran Duran,” he added. “For example with Daniel Arsham’s Dior collaboration in 2019, I did developments of the baseball cap, because that’s what he wears. And with Kenny Scharf, even though we did the beret (which could almost be converted into a smiley), because he’s often working outside and is follically challenged too, he will wear a straw hat with a bit of a brim”. In fact, the straw hat is an element of the house that Jones will be taking forward in their next collection.