For Dior Men’s latest collection, creative director Kim Jones channels the Beat Generation, spotlighting the creativity of counterculture in Jack Kerouac’s On the Road.

Visitors emerged from thick, black curtains into a dark room plastered with rare manuscripts and first edition copies of texts, such as Allen Ginsberg’s Empty Mirror, framed in glass casings. In Jones’ first show staged in his home country since 2003, Dior Men’s Fall 2022 line reflected a distinctly British offbeat sensibility at Kensington Olympia in posh West London.

The hangar-like venue played host to guests like Naomi Campbell, slowthai, Lila Moss, Sam Smith, and Charlie Heaton, as well as young local designers and students. Each guest found a small placard reading, “To Virgil, with love forever,” in tribute to the late designer, on their seats.

The runway featured an 80-meter-long facsimile of On the Road. Tweed jackets and trench coats paired with bulky hiking boots recalled the youth revolution of ’50s Americana. Slouchy sweaters, skinny ties, shearling aviator jackets, and sequined socks all made appearances in Jones’ modern reimagining of the Beat Generation. Kerouac is directly referenced in reproduced covers of his novels painted onto jackets and printed onto shirts.