Luke Leitch meets the menswear designers of Louis Vuitton, Z Zegna, and Rag & Bone - an elite quartet of British menswear designers who have swapped London for Paris, Milan and Manhattan.
It's not as if Jones, 33, is unadventurous. Professionally, his previous incarnations as designer for Dunhill and his own label garnered rapturous acclaim for their precise and playful take on contemporary streetwear and tailoring. And at Vuitton, where he is the figurehead for the masculine half of what is among the most globally recognised brands in the fashion industry, he has embarked on a brilliantly straightforward conceit around which to frame his biannual collections: a world tour.
On the day we met in Paris, Jones was adding the very final touches to his collection for this autumn, a collection that drew much of its inspiration from Bhutan. Slightly manic from the weight of his impending deadline, Jones took me to the rails to see his Himalaya-ready deerskin parkas, marble-ornamented carabiners, some great jackets and overcoats in yak felt (who knew?), Vuitton-ised luxury hiking boots (ostentatious, but knowingly so), blankets in Bhutanese check, shirt-studs made from stone taken from Mt Everest itself, and even a traditional Vuitton trunk transformed into a sherpa-ready backpack.
