Dior X Air Jordan 1 High

Two ways to wear the High. First, laces loose and collar open with wide black trousers and a heavy hoodie, which is the streetwear reading and the one that treats the pair as a shoe rather than an artefact. Second, laced fully with slim dark denim and a tailored overcoat, so the grey collar sits against the coat hem and the pair reads formal from the knee down. Size on the Jordan 1 pattern runs narrow for wide feet; try before committing. These are white leather in an Indian climate, so keep them out of rain, wipe after each wear, use shoe trees, and never machine wash.

Dior has a long habit of absorbing street culture rather than observing it: John Galliano's Spring-Summer 2000 show explicitly took in hip-hop's influence and launched the Saddle bag into the celebrity culture of that decade. The Air Dior High is the same move made twenty years later with sneakers as the medium, and it is the piece from Jones's Dior most likely to be recognised by someone who has never looked at a runway. His tenure also produced work with KAWS, Shawn Stussy, Hajime Sorayama, Daniel Arsham, Raymond Pettibon, Sacai and 1017 ALYX 9SM, but none of those reached this far outside fashion.

Built in Italy in white and Dior Gray leather, the High carries the full ankle collar, which is where this pair earns its price: the collar is the panel that shows the leather quality and holds the individually numbered lining that identifies each pair. The Swoosh is printed in Dior's Oblique monogram, lifted from the B23, the house's own high-top sneaker built on Oblique canvas, and the Wings mark is replaced by an Air Dior Wings logo. The high cut gives all of those elements more surface to sit on, so the pair reads as a Dior object at distance and as a Jordan 1 up close, which is exactly the balance the design was aiming at.