Originally on WWD - By Joelle Diderich on April 9, 2021

BEACH BLANKET BABYLON: Dior men’s designer Kim Jones is extending his collaboration with artist Kenny Scharf into a capsule collection of beachwear set to hit select Dior stores from mid-April.

The retro-tinged casual wardrobe spans T-shirts, polo shirts, shorts and bathrobes. Dior Oblique motifs in tone-on-tone are combined with terry cloth, along with two-tone effects and plays on transparency. Blue or white track suits feature the Dior logo in rubber.

Scharf’s psychedelic 2011 painting “Viva Mare Viva Mar,” featuring aquatic creatures in pop colors, appears on a silk shirt and a swimsuit, as well as a bandana. Accessories include a boat bag in Dior Oblique jacquard, Atlas sandals in a new white version, and a steel water bottle with a leather and nylon strap.

Jones has made art collaborations a central feature of his design process, with a preference for artists that cross over into pop culture. Scharf’s cartoon-like paintings steeped in sci-fi inspired the pre-fall collection, unveiled in December with a film that showed models walking against an intergalactic backdrop to a soundtrack of Deee-Lite.