Dior Men - Spring/Summer 2021 - Paris Fashion Week Men’s

After KAWS, alias Brian Donnelly, for his first show, then the Japanese Hajime Sorayama, Alex Foxton and more recently the American artist Daniel Arsham, Kim Jones chose to collaborate with the Ghanaian Amoako Boafo, one more iconoclastic artist on the Dior Men’s collaborative list that has grown from season to season since he took the reins in 2018.

For those who do not know Amoako Boafo: this 36-year-old Ghanaian, living in Vienna where he studied, Ghana, and Chicago and represented by the American gallery Mariane Ibrahim, is one of the rising stars of the art market. He is known for his portraits of black men and women painted with his fingers, ‘’subtly streamlined and uncluttered’’ and who have ‘’a sense of style’’, Dior said in its show note.

‘’I love his work, I always wanted to work with an African artist because I grew up in Africa and African art has always been a part of my life’’, Kim Jones explains in the film.

Worn exclusively by black models – we cannot help linking with the Black Lives Matter protests spread from the U.S. to the rest of the world – the collection was mixed chic sportswear pieces with sophisticated cuts, Dior’s iconic pearl gray color with flashy touches of pink, yellow or green. These associations were born from the fusion of two creative worlds of two artists whose collection video showed unexpected affinities.