Kim Jones Pioneered Athleisure. So What's Next?
Long before it was universally cool to rock sneakers with expensive dresses or cozy sweatshirts became more essential to high-fashion wardrobes than a crisp, slim-fitting shirt, there was designer Kim Jones. The men's style director at Louis Vuitton since 2011, Jones began his career in London with a namesake label that he launched right after graduating from Central St. Martins in 2003 (his thesis collection was purchased, in entirety, by none other than John Galliano).
Jones made his mark on the fashion world, gaining notoriety for filling his runways with shiny athletic tech fabrics, oversized T-shirts, baggy pants, big sneakers, and puffer vests. He collaborated with soccer brand Umbro for eight years on a capsule collection of fashionable sportswear, and won the British Fashion Council award for menswear in both 2006 and 2009. In the decade-plus since he began, it's been impossible not to notice his influence on a whole crop of street savvy Brit designers (Nasir Mazhar, Martine Rose, Craig Green), skater-friendly creative directors like Demna Gvasalia and Virgil Abloh, and, more broadly, an entire generation who think of sweats as formalwear. Even Céline Dion wore an oversized Vetements hoodie while attending couture week in Paris this month.
While we've come up with a ton of names in the past few years for this new era of casual style-normcore, athleisure, high-end streetwear-to Jones, making clothes that are as comfortable as they are chic is just pure instinct. "It was kind of obvious," the designer told ELLE.com. "Formality is still enjoyable, but seeing people wear real clothes, and seeing all the people I grew up inspired by, who might have to wear a suit to work but they got out of it after work, it's just the only way that it could be. He continues, "I didn't really think about it, I just did it. It was just what we wore, and what we liked. A guy can look good in a suit or a tracksuit."
"I didn't really think about it, I just did it. It was just what we wore, and what we liked. A guy can look good in a suit or a tracksuit."
No wonder Jones was tapped by Nike to create a capsule collection for NikeLab, the iconic brand's innovation-driven concept offshoot. Set to hit stores on July 23, the collection is a small but dynamic line of athleisure perfection for both men and women, including an update of a classic windbreaker in bold, neon hues, smart and functional lightweight track pants, and his take on an iconic sneaker silhouette, the LWP.
According to the lifelong Nike fan, the design process came quite naturally. "I really like the LWP-when I was young, I saw them in a Japanese magazine, and I was quite obsessed. The windrunner was proposed because it was one of the first things I ever wore," Jones says. "But to be able to update them to 2016 is quite exciting. It was slightly sentimental."
The colors for the collection were inspired by his love for two Nike sneakers-the Air Max 1 and the Air Max 95-that he all-but gushes about, speaking as if they were designed by Michelangelo. "If you probably had 100 design products that should be in the museum, [the Air Max] should be in that 100," he says. "They're probably one of the best designed products in the world." It seems that for Jones, Nike is more than just one of world's biggest apparel brands-it's pop art. "Proportion, colorway, the mix of that air bubble when it was first out-it doesn't look dated now, and that to me means it's good design."
For a man like Jones, there is one particularly important added bonus to making regular old sportswear more gorgeous: travel-friendliness. Growing up the son of a hydro-geologist, Jones was a global citizen living between Ecuador, the Bahamas, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Kenya, Botswana, and eventually back in London. The designer still globe trots-he's been to Japan over 80 times-and this year alone he's also been to Vietnam, the Maldives, Cambodia, Thailand, Singapore, Greece, and Korea. Traveling not only informs his high-end designs at Vuitton (a recent collection was inspired by the African Sahara), but also his desire to make accessible, stylish clothes that will keep you happy even if you're cramped in coach. "I looked at the way Nike can make these nylon jackets now and minimize seaming so it's not uncomfortable when you are, say, moving your arms around," Jones says. "The trousers we did have stretch in it, so you can wear them and look not scruffy, but feel easy," he adds. "You're going through security, taking things out of your bag-it can be quite stressful-so [we wanted to] just to make that a bit more comfortable."
Now that a whole slew of designers have caught up with Jones' cozy, comfy athleisure vibe and he's achieved the dream of working with the sportswear holy grail that is Nike, it's easy to wonder if Jones himself will move on to the next stylish frontier. "When I see people that do it, and they have platforms, and they're not really pushing it, I think that's a bit disappointing," he says without naming any names. Pushed, though, to do a little trend forecasting and tell us what the next craze in fashion will be, Jones won't even give a hint. "That's what keeps me ahead," he says playfully. For now, he's just thrilled that the philosophy that has animated his career is at the forefront of fashion, and that with Nike, he's able to accomplish what he's long hoped, but may be a little harder to do at a luxury house: to make real clothes for real people. "It's all great and lovely to have a concept and an idea-runway shows are great to do," he says, "but the biggest gratitude is when people have gone out and bought it. Nike is universal."
