“I wanted to mix and match up things from different periods of the archive but around the time that related to both,” Jones explains of his confident, colourful clash of counter-culture and couture. “And I wanted to dress it up – so sequinned socks with workwear trousers, sequins on the shirts – what would it be like if you were thinking about On The Road, packing and unpacking? So it’s mixed up and a bit ‘off’ – in a nice way – with that Americana, but very Dior.” 

Working with Kerouac’s estate to reproduce first-edition cover designs on sweatshirts, whilst privileging denim for the first time in a house founded on its tailoring, Jones makes the generational leaps with characteristic verve, a nuanced embrace of the bookish and bohemian at once aimed at and responsive to an audience supposedly more appreciative of Tik-Tok.

Let us hope Jones’ deep mining of Kerouac’s timeless peregrinations will be picked up by a fresh cohort of young bibliophiles. In the meantime, the designer’s optimistic vision for a new Beat Generation, one that refuses to be cowed by current circumstances and looks instead for whatever lies beyond the horizon, is precisely the menswear fillip we need.