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Dior Men’s Winter Collection is a Mid-Century Masterpiece Reborn

Creative director Kim Jones has debuted the Dior Men’s Winter 2025-2026 collection at Paris Fashion Week.
Held at the historic Ecole Militaire, the runway show displayed both men’s couture and ready-to-wear pieces.
The collection is inspired by Christian Dior’s La Ligne H pattern from Autumn-Winter 1954.

Paris Fashion Week has always stood out as a beacon of individuality in an ocean of sameness, but in 2025, something felt different. High fashion‘s first foray back to the runway since the dawn of the new year was marked by a return to tradition—a cultural reset for an industry that has perennially been pushed to create new, innovative, and genre-defying garments that typify the ever-sweeping tastes of consumers. For Dior creative director Kim Jones, a refined palette and a nod to the past were all that was required for his latest Men’s Winter 2025-26 collection, and the inspiration may surprise you.

Revealed at Dior’s Men’s show at the historic Ecole Militaire, under the shimmering lights of France’s most iconic resident, the latest collection takes inspiration from Christian Ernest Dior’s La Ligne H pattern from Autumn-Winter 1954. The journey back into the archives saw Jones take the angular and structured design cues from the mid-century womenswear piece and reimagine them for a new era. The result is an uncharacteristic departure from gender-fluid garments, with Jones’ latest effort leaving no ambiguity in its design language and approach.

The creative director explained that the notion of metamorphosis played a significant role in driving the Dior Men’s Winter 2025-2026 collection, with specific attention paid to the interplay between generations. Ligne H represented the perfect through-line for Dior to retell the story of menswear through the ages.

“Mr Dior’s Ligne H was in our heads even before going into the archive this season,” Jones said. “It has elements that are graphic and angular, whihc felt eminently transferrable into the men’s world.”

Interestingly, the latest collection does not differentiate between modes, with both men’s couture and ready-to-wear pieces exhibited on the runway. The traditional silhouettes, best typified by the pinstripe and herringbone pattern overcoats, are the standout pieces, embodying a strict rigidity that feels innately masculine, but therein lies the beauty.

In trademark style, Jones has borrowed more from the womenswear collection, lifting the belted full-shape of the Opera coat directly from the post-war Ligne H women’s archive. It’s an incredible feat to take a classic piece from one gender and so effortlessly resurrect it for the contemporary audience of another, but that’s precisely what Dior has done with its decidedly pared-back new range.

“We believed it was time to focus on Mr Dior again. We wanted to go back to the roots and concentrate on the quintessence of the house,” Jones continued. “There is a sense of fashion history, particularly the history of menswear, running through this collection. The shift from something quite ornate and extravagant in the eighteenth century to something more linear and utilitarian in the nineteenth, with the beginnings of modern menswear. Yet, while a lot refers to the history of fashion, this is not historical fashion. Ultimately, in this collection, we wanted to say something about now.”

In many ways, the Dior Men’s Winter 2025-2026 collection is a nod to the ever-changing ideals that surround modern masculinity. Throughout the dazzling runway show, which saw a glowing white staircase descend to a harsh, minimalistic black floor, the figure of Casanova permeated. A fusion of masculine and feminine, the concept represented the dual sense of the modern ‘Ladies Man’, acknowledging the influence of women’s haute couture and men’s ready-to-wear.

Satin bows softened the collection’s angular tailoring, while a heavy dose of glass-bead embroidery, taken directly from Monsieur Dior’s Spring-Summer 1948 haute couture Pondichéry look, lightened the heaviness of the structured garments. This embroidery was recreated on the pink robe that closed the show, with the same aesthetic carried through on the collection’s jewellery.

Elsewhere, Dior created a collection of leather goods, complete with masculine hardware, men’s leather dress shoes, and highly polished Dior Palmerés boots. Closing out the footwear collection is an interesting special order hand-stitched hybrid trainer that features an archival shoe embroidery from 1961. For all the new collection highlights, one simple fact remains—when it comes to reinterpreting the design cues of the past, no one has a better eye for detail than Kim Jones. This foray into menswear may be a little more siloed than recent collections, but the ethos of cross-pollination rings undeniably true.

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