Squalid and gloom-ridden, TS Eliot’s vision of societal collapse proved an unlikely source of inspiration for Dior’s latest menswear collection. Written in the aftermath of WW1, the abject misery put forward in The Waste Land is made worse by its fleeting glimmers of hope – which is precisely where Kim Jones seems to have moored himself for AW23. With Gwendoline Christie and Robert Pattinson enacting the epic poem on massive wrap-around screens, the designer showed life jackets, storm coats, oilskin waterproofs, and buoyancy pads: evoking ideas of rescue and renewal amid chaos (a theme just as relevant to 2023 as it was to Eliot in 1923).
Photography Cris Fragkou
