His Name, Again

Kim Jones is putting his name back on a label. He shelved his own brand in 2008, when Dunhill made him creative director, and spent the next eighteen years making other people’s houses bigger: Dunhill, then Louis Vuitton men’s, then Dior Men, with Fendi womenswear and couture running alongside. On 12 October 2026 he confirmed the comeback himself. The label is called Kim Jones. It launches online in mid-2027, sold direct, and opens its first store in Hong Kong as early as October 2027. He is building it with Lucy Beeden, his longtime design director.

On paper it is a designer going home. In practice it is something more specific: a brand designed by someone who has spent two decades learning how scale works, now applying that to his own name, at a price point well below the houses he ran.

The first label, 2003 to 2008

Jones graduated from the menswear MA at Central Saint Martins in 2002 and launched his own line the following year. It ran until 2008. It was a London menswear label rooted in sportswear: track tops, technical fabrics, clean white tailoring cut for movement. It became a cult name in Japan, a detail that matters for everything that follows.

The first label, as shown on the runway

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Look at those clothes now and the throughline is obvious. The sportswear-as-tailoring idea that later made him famous at Louis Vuitton and Dior was already there, in a smaller budget and a smaller room.

Eighteen years in other houses

The Dunhill job came in 2008, a British tailoring house, and Jones spent much of that period in Hong Kong. He has said he learned most of what he knows about the tailoring business there. Louis Vuitton men’s followed in 2011, then Dior. LVMH named him Artistic Director of Dior Homme on 19 March 2018, two months after he left Louis Vuitton. In September 2020 the group added Fendi’s women’s collections, couture, ready-to-wear and fur, while he kept Dior. He stepped down from Fendi in October 2024 and showed his last Dior Men collection in January 2025.

From Dunhill to Louis Vuitton

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At Louis Vuitton he put sportswear and streetwear codes at the centre of a luxury men’s collection, and at Dior he took the same idea into the house’s couture codes. The Dior Homme debut, Spring 2019, opened on pastel tailoring under a wall of flowers. At Fendi his couture debut, Spring 2021, went the other way: dark, sculptural, glamorous.

Dior and Fendi, the two debuts

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Why now

For the first time in his career, Jones has no house. He stepped down from Fendi in October 2024 to focus on Dior Men, then showed his last Dior Men collection in January 2025. That left him with the reputation of a top creative director and no contract. He first hinted at a new collection in December 2025, at an industry conference in Hong Kong. Ten months later the label is real.

In the brand’s statement he puts it simply: after many years working with houses and collaborators, “it feels like the right moment to do something under my own name again”. The new label brings together what he has always been interested in, which he lists as fashion, art and design, and gives him space to work with people he admires.

What the new label is

The label will be rooted in menswear and tailoring, genderless and built for versatility across categories. It is designed in his London studio and made mostly in Japan, with leather goods made in Italy. Jones has said he wants to take the name beyond clothes, into interiors. The website, kimjones.com, is already live as an early-access page.

Some early designs return. A reversible smoking jacket, a tuxedo on one side and deconstructed sportswear on the other. A two-toned patchwork shirt. Jones describes them as pieces from the archive that were ahead of their time, fused with the tailoring he has done since.

Lucy Beeden, the other name

The label carries one name, but it is built by two people. Lucy Beeden has been Jones’s design director for years and is now his partner in the venture. Jones and Beeden keep a majority stake. An investor they haven’t named has come in, with the aim of scaling quickly.

That structure matters. Most designer-founded labels start small and fragile, with one founder doing everything. This one starts with a team that has run some of the largest studios in fashion, plus outside money from day one. Beeden is the continuity: the person who turned his ideas into collections at house scale, and who now does the same for a brand they own.

The price is the strategy

The most expensive piece in the debut collection is a €1,300 tailored coat. A pair of orange utility trousers is €380. Jones and Beeden call the price point “considered”. It is luxury in quality and in the name on the label, not in the price tag, and it is a long way below what a Dior or Fendi coat costs.

The logic is the one he spent eighteen years learning. Reach comes from price, distribution and desire working together. The houses had the desire and the distribution. His own label has the name, a direct channel on his own site, and prices low enough for the people who followed him from house to house to actually buy in.

Why Hong Kong first

The first store is a two-level, 4,000 sq ft flagship in Central Yards, a harbourfront development by Henderson Land in Hong Kong’s Central district. The developer says Phase 1 opens in 2027 and Phase 2 in 2032. More stores across Asia will follow, with selected retail partners elsewhere.

Central Yards, Hong Kong

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Asia isn’t a new market for him. The first label was a cult name in Japan. Dunhill gave him years in Hong Kong. Dior took a whole show to Tokyo for Pre-Fall 2019, under a giant robot by Hajime Sorayama. Opening in Asia isn’t a bet on an untested market. It starts where his name already sells.

What it means for designer brands

For a decade the path ran one way: build a small label, get hired by a house, stay in the house. Jones is running it backwards, with the house’s lessons and none of the house’s price structure. If it works, it is a template for every big-house designer between jobs: come back under your own name, but with a team, outside money, direct distribution and a clear market, not a runway and a prayer.

It also changes what a designer label promises. This is not a creative director’s playground priced for collectors. It is meant to be worn, and to be bought by the people who wore the Dior trainers and the Louis Vuitton bags.

Our read

For eighteen years Kim Jones made other people’s names bigger. The new label shows what he took from that: the archive pieces say the ideas were always his, the €1,300 ceiling says he wants volume over mystique, and Hong Kong says he knows exactly where his audience already is. The risk is the one every founder takes. There is no house behind him now, only Beeden, an investor and his own name. That is the point. For the first time since 2008, the reach he builds is his.