Kim Jones, the artistic director of Dior’s men’s collections, is collaborating with the NGO Parley for the Oceans for a capsule collection.
For the new men’s beachwear capsule collection, Kim Jones has teamed up with the NGO Parley for the Oceans, which has been fighting against plastic pollution in the oceans for the past 10 years. Initiated by Cyrill Gutsch, the latter founded his association Parley for the Oceans, which works to clean up the seas and oceans from tons of plastic waste, but also to call for a gradual end to the use of this same plastic in everyday life.
Some of the items in the collection are made from yarns and fabrics made from marine plastic debris and upcycled fishing gear recovered from coasts and islands around the world, including the Maldives, the Dominican Republic and Sri Lanka, and transformed into high performance materials by Parley and its global network.
The eco-responsible vision that Cyril Gutsch shares through his Parley Ocean Plastic association, manages to convince Kim Jones, in 2019. Dior’s teams used recycled polyester developed by Parley to create fabrics, including a jacquard, a knit and a technical canvas. Working in a palette of blues and ochres, they wove patterns such as the house’s signature Oblique, as well as a wavy graphic pattern from the archives known as Adriatique.
Kim Jones explains that he started making efforts to introduce more sustainable fabrics as soon as he joined Dior four years ago. “We do it a lot. It’s just something we don’t really talk about, so I said, let’s do a collection where we can talk about it because it’s important.”
The capsule collection includes shorts, shirts and windbreaker jackets that fold into pockets inspired by the Parley Ocean Plastic Saddle bag, as well as poplin trousers, thick cotton T-shirts, polo shirts and lightweight jumpers, as well as hats, water bottles and net bags.
The Dior collection supports the Parley X10 impact programme, which aims to ensure that 10 times the equivalent of each product’s carbon and plastic footprint is intercepted in nature, fund the development of materials that can replace plastic in the long term and avoid the use of new, virgin plastic.
Available in shops and on the Dior website from 14 April 2022.
Read also > DIOR : THE MONTAIGNE, THE YELLOW DIAMOND SYMBOL OF THE REOPENING OF AVENUE MONTAIGNE
Featured photo : © Dior
