Kim Jones shows how much he admires Chitose Abe as Sacai becomes his latest Stussy

Dior is on a collaboration roll. Sacai is on a collaboration roll. It’s really a matter of time when the two brands will find each other. We’re surprised it was not sooner. Dior’s Kim Jones wrote on Instagram that Sacai’s Chitose Abe “has been a friend for about 15 years”. It’s amazing that in this time, Mr Jones has not thought of pairing with Ms Abe. Until the pandemic strikes and he misses “friends and travel”; until he could no longer visit Japan, where he and his team “visited a lot”. “We started a conversation about working together,” he wrote, “and did this collection over a period of lockdown, sending samples and sketches back and forth.” Collaboration has, for a long time, the sense of cooperating in close proximity. Now, that may only be feasible by connecting remotely and digitally. It does make us wonder if the partnership would have yielded a stronger result if they had, in fact, been able to be in each other’s company and allowed the proverbial ideas to bounce off each other.

The images that Dior made available to the media do not really reveal a lot. Sacai’s clothes are always more complex than they appear, but how much of that complexity is absorbed into the Dior aesthetic isn’t immediately discernible. Mr Jones isn’t the kind of designer that Ms Abe is—a brilliant and tenacious technician. He tends to play it straight. Hybridisation is not his forte. Nor, are unusual cuts (Ms Abe was a pattern-maker at Comme des Garçons before starting her own label). Compare Mr Jones’s ‘remake’ of Nike’s Air Jordan 1 for Dior (which is still asking five-figures sums!) to Ms Abe’s Nike Blazer for Sacai (we’ll just stick to basketball shoes). And the difference is clear. One is happy to go with the as-is, while the other is eager to see what are other possibilities, such as ripping apart and redoing. Or, perhaps, the mere pairing of Dior and Sacai is hybridising itself?

With a touch of Sacai, Dior is looking better than ever. The 57-piece capsule still bears the touches of Kim Jones, for sure. The clothes definitely is still amped-up to hit luxury’s high notes—for example, the fabrics are still heavy—but they look less couture-fied, as if Ms Abe had, at her end in Tokyo, relaxed this and that. There is the clearly casual ‘shacket’ (shirt-jacket that is more a Japanese obsession than French), with zipped pockets that might have been plucked from an MA-1 bomber jacket, which Ms Abe often reinterprets or adapts from. In fact, no Sacai anything is complete without it and the MA-1 makes it Dior appearance, slightly longer and with a two-zip fastening. Another Sacai detail is the draw-cord hem on shirts—Dior didn’t omit that. Nor, the Sacai two-layer shirttails that contrast the woven with the knit. Re-looking at the images, what struck us as possibly clever is that Dior fans will see Dior and Sacai followers will be able to suss out Sacai.

And there are the accessories. The Diorness is unmistakable, as in their structured forms. And, of course, the Saddle Bag, but now, not offered in its original (reintroduced) shape. A Prada-ish tote, for example, comes with the signature leather flap of the Saddle. A D-ring attached to one end of the handle allows a water bottle and its nylon/leather sleeve to be attached. The side of the bag also sports lacing that is reminiscent of backpacks that have similarly fastened cords to hold skateboards. These function-first details, often seen in Sacai designs, is very much a Japanese design vernacular and is often seen in the work of Sacai’s compatriot label Kolor (Ms Abe is married to its founder/designer Junichi Abe). But perhaps the most coveted will be anything with the new logo: the Dior text with Sacai stretched out on the ‘i’. And if one, emblazoned across the back of a top, is any indication, Dior is going to have another Stussy in its hands.

Photos: Brett Lloyd/Dior