Shawn Stussy Designs Exclusive Surfboard for Dior
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SURF’S UP: Forget about Dior’s Air Jordan sneaker: the most exclusive product the French fashion house is releasing this season is a surfboard.
Kim Jones, artistic director of Dior men’s collections, asked streetwear pioneer Shawn Stussy to return to his roots by creating a limited-edition Dior board featuring his reinterpretation of the house’s logo in gray and ice blue.
“Shawn Stussy is one of my great heroes. He started out as a surfer, making his own boards and painted his name on them. It was quite natural for me to ask him to work together on the very first Dior surfboard,” Jones said in a statement on Monday.
Jones unveiled his collaboration with Stussy, the founder of the Stüssy brand, at the Dior pre-fall 2020 show in Miami in December, with a full selection of ready-to-wear and accessories.
Stussy designed the surfboard, limited to 100 numbered editions, in the narrow shape known as a gun, designed to ride big waves. “For Dior, I wanted to create a streamlined board with elongated curves and subtle house colors, that seems to dance on the ocean,” he said.
The boards were finished by hand at the UWL surfboard manufacturing workshop in La Rochelle, France, with each piece requiring 72 hours of handwork. They should cost in the region of around 10,000 euros each.
Stussy has been designing and shaping surfboards since the age of 13. In 1980, he launched his own business, making surfboards and scrawling his signature on the finished product — incidentally giving rise to one of the decade’s most successful streetwear brands.
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