Blame WWD: If Daniel Lee Is Taking a Final Burberry Bow Monday, AOC Is All In for Kim Jones

AOC finds the rumor mill around luxury brand designers so tough that creative directors must have a therapist waiting in the wings for a daily dose of self-confidence. WWD’s Friday headline asked: Will Daniel Lee Take His Final Bow for Burberry at Monday’s Show? [WWD]

New Burberry CEO Josh Schulman is much more focused on the heritage DNA of the Burberry brand, and less so on the runway. He said there was too much focus on being:

“modern at the expense of celebrating our heritage. We introduced new brand codes and signifiers that were unfamiliar to our customers. Our product was weighted to seasonal fashion with a niche aesthetic obscuring our more timeless core collections.”

Enter Stage Left: Kim Jones at Charleston Trust

Anne had a Eureka moment a few weeks back, weaving Kim Jones’ departure from Dior Men into a new reality: “The future for Kim Jones will include his work with Charleston Trust, where the designer became a vice president in fall 2024.”

Let’s talk British Heritage, Burberry

When Kim Jones made his couture debut at Fendi, he packed up Kate Moss and two famous photographers to create ‘Kate Moss at Charleston, Wearing Kim Jones Fendi Couture Lensed by Mert & Marcus’ for British Vogue [Link]. The Guardian picked up AOC’s story in 2023 [and sent wonderful traffic our way] in their post on how to get the Bloomsbury set’s Charleston vibe in their own homes.

For Bloomsbury Group: All Roads Led to Rome

Olivia Singer interviewed Kim Jones in East Sussex, where he bought a holiday home in the village of Rodmell. The house is close to his childhood roots and a few doors down from the legendary 20th century writer Virginia Woolf’s cottage”.

“As a teenager, I spent a lot of time cycling round all these villages,” Jones tells Singer. “This first collection feels almost autobiographical. What I’m referencing feels really personal.”

The designer is quick to underscore the tremendous synergy that existed between the Bloomsbury Group and the Italians. Jones “pulls out a catalogue of Vanessa Bell’s paintings, which flit between Sussex farmland and the Borghese gardens in Rome; Woolf was also entranced by the “infinite silence” of Perugino’s frescoes.”

“And if you look in the Charleston library, or at Clive Bell’s book collection, it’s all there. All roads lead to Rome.” Jones says to underscore his point. This is important because AOC is mounting a firm embrace of humanism in the coming weeks as an anti-fascist action. Humanism was born in Italy — and clearly one of the most important art movements in Europe was centered around this new thinking that emerged out of the Renaissance.

As an aside, the enormous success of Brunello Cucinelli is rooted in the principles of humanism and AOC has been influenced by his thinking in very significant ways.

Kim Jones and Dior Men Sponsor Fall 2023 Bloomsbury Show

Images from the Dior Men’s Summer 2023 campaign were featured at the Charleston show, but not the clothes. AOC absolutely adored the campaign, writing:

Jones is at his best when uniting eye-drenching beauty and elegance — with a strong appeal to sensualists — with a utilitarian focus on functionality. Dior’s global culture lovers fancy themselves as Jack Kerouac ‘On the Road’ types — but better dressers.

These campaign images by Rafael Pavarotti [IG] are like fine champagne. The talented photographer is at ease swinging from a highly-stylized, Erdem-inspired, vintage garden with dark undertones campaign to these images that are crisp and modern, imbued with a cleaner and lighter garden vibe.

Dior Men's Summer 2023 Campaign Is a Rich Adventure for Garden Lovers AOC Fashion

Humanism and the Charleston Art Movement

AOC trusts that readers are seeing the enormous synergies that would exist between Kim Jones and Burberry. We are also entering a time when a large number of luxury customers support humanist principles and not Elon Musk taking a blow torch to the world.

The first question AOC asked our AI for scholars was: is it accurate to call the Bloomsbury gang ‘humanists’? That answer is ‘yes’. We always verify our assumptions or philosophy of a situation with research.

This movement coincided with a period marked by a growing embrace of humanism, where the value and agency of human beings, individually and collectively, found new artistic and philosophical expression.

The Charleston Art Movement was characterized by a rejection of conservative artistic norms and a celebration of modernism, drawing inspiration from a diverse array of influences. Artists such as Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell, who lived and worked at Charleston, encapsulated the spirit of humanism in their work, emphasizing emotion, experience, and personal perspective. Their art was not only a testament to individual creativity but also a reflection of the significance of community and interpersonal relationships — concepts central to humanist ideology.

The Kim Jones Rat Pack

In the same post announcing Jones’ departure from Dior Men, AOC expressed pleasant surprise to learn that Kim Jones acted as a mentor to Virgil Abloh. Privately, Anne was joking that Kim Jones was [is] part of a new rat pack that also included not only Abloh [RIP] but Nigo, now Kenzo’s creative director, and Pharrell Williams at Louis Vuitton Men on our incomplete list.

NSS Magazine wrote in 2018:

In February of this year, Jones had only recently left his post at Louis Vuitton and was thinking about his next move, while at the same time on the other side of the planet Virgil Abloh's gets an iPhone message that will come to change his life forever.

The truth of the situation was so much better. Virgil Abloh had been sleeping on Kim Jones’ sofa for weeks to months at a time, learning everything he could from his mentor. Jones didn’t leave Vuitton Men without knowing where he was going — to #2 LVMH brand Dior to make some magic.

Jones groomed Abloh as his successor. NSS makes it sound like the two guys barely knew each other. There’s a long an excellent video of the two talking about their relationship in our original post at top: Enter Stage Left link. It will also be in widget of related articles end of this post.

Burberry Was Knocking on the Door to My Brain

For AOC in that moment — as I watched the video of Abloh and Jones together — and knowing how much we all miss Virgil so much, a Jones path to Burberry was knocking loudly on the door of my brain. I’ve not been able to shut down the knocking, and I would not have written this post without reading Friday’s WWD headline about Burberry’s Feb. 23 show on Monday, perhaps being Lee’s last show.

I’m not being quiet any longer, after that headline. WWD doesn’t mention Jones, unless they updated the article.

My passion for Ken Jones at Burberry has nothing to do with Daniel Lee’s significant capabilities as a designer. Lee’s a very talented creative in an industry in serious need of talent.

I can’t think of any designer who can tell the Burberry heritage story better, while also giving Burberry a Euro luxury lift for all the right reasons: humanist values in a world where Elon Musk wants to destroy humanist values, parading around on stage with his chain saw, as he buys a new identity for America that aligns us against our best European friends. I am sick to my stomach.

Bernard Arnault can celebrate his wonder boy Musk, but this is a speeding bullet train — and everyone knows how much I respect Mr. Arnault. We will have to disagree on this one.

The Humanists Must Gather Together: Burberry London in Love 2025 Campaign

Even Burberry’s new ‘London in Love’ campaign captures my sentiments in a deeply personal way. Read details of the campaign: ‘It's Always Burberry Weather: London in Love’ Campaign February 2025