Flats Friday: Dior Bar Jacket Interpretation
On Moodboard Monday, I posted about my 30th birthday being cancelled due to the stay at orders brought on by Covid-19. I used that mood board and the trip to New York that didn’t happen as design inspirations for this men’s jacket.
One of the top reasons I wanted to visit New York was because of the Met Gala exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. This years theme is titled About Time: Fashion and Duration, and as the 150th Anniversary of the museum, it looks through fashion pieces from 1870 to the present, examining, “the primary work representing the linear nature of fashion and the secondary work its cyclical character.” To paraphrase, it looks at two occurrences in fashion as it relates to time; one being the complete timeline of fashion from 1870 to the present and the second being how fashion repeats itself as designers are inspired by past work of other designers.
Looking through the available images online of the exhibition, I saw that one of the featured pieces is Christian Dior iconic Bar jacket that jumpstarted the New Look era of fashion of cinched waists, volume and structure. Next to it is Junya Watanabe’s interpretation as a leather jacket and I thought it was everything. And then I started thinking, what if I interpreted this iconic piece into menswear. So I did it.
The key elements to the original Bar jacket are the cinched waist and the exaggerated hip shape. These were definitely a must to move forward with in my own interpretation. My initial urge was to reimagine an athletic bomber jacket silhouette but I quickly nixed that idea and kept the design tailored. As for construction, I don’t want any topical details or stitches because it distracts from the overall style. We know I love a good topstitch, but often times, less is more. Fabrication is a cream wool and the belt fastening is a matte rubber coated buckle.
