How Hylton Nel's ceramic cats made it on the Dior runway at Paris Fashion Week

After a visit to Nel’s studio and home in Calitzdorp, Dior’s artistic director and designer, Kim Jones, brought to life the artist’s ceramic pieces in the new men’s ready-to-wear collection. Apart from the playful motifs that featured on Dior’s apparel, Nel’s enlarged cat sculptures towered over the models as they walked the runway.

 

Read Dior’s press release here:

 

“In this collection, I wanted to concentrate on elements of craft, the skills of the ateliers and artisans who work for the House: this is the lifeblood of Dior. There is always a sense of biography when it comes to the House, that of Christian Dior and the succession of designers, here combined with the life of the ceramicist Hylton Nel. This collection is a celebration of work and an expression of who somebody is and what they achieve through work, that legacy and continuity through time. In the case of Christian Dior, Hylton Nel and myself, it’s an idea of parallel paths with different stories. It’s life-long work in ceramics and paintings and life-long work in fabrications and clothing. There is an idea of and dedication to art and the applied arts shared by all.” Kim Jones.

 

At the heart of the Dior Summer 2025 Collection lies the embrace of motifs, figuration, and the almost homespun monumentalism of South African ceramicist Hylton Nel. Artistic Director Kim Jones continues to explore and advance global ideas of savoir-faire without hierarchy in the collection. This season, Jones combines functionality, longevity, and legacy by blending his signature take on luxury and utility, men’s workwear, and the women’s haute couture archive. The silhouettes are both sculptural and practical, borrowing from the language of ceramics in form and finishings. The humble and the noble merge in fabrications, while the functionality of workwear is enhanced with the influence of archival couture cuts and the handcraft of the Dior ateliers.

 

Rounded volumes dominate tailoring and outerwear, lending a sensuous finish to forthright pieces. Archival haute couture finds new life this season, notably in the realisation of an unrealised Saint-Laurent sketch for a coat from the Autumn-Winter 1958 season, appearing fully realised for the first time and informing further tailored looks. The scarf collar motif, taken from another Saint-Laurent piece, Negatif, from Autumn-Winter 1960, is reimagined as a mock ceramic structure through an original artisanal process that took months to achieve. Knitwear echoes sculptural forms, incorporating playful patterns, prints, and ceramic fastenings inspired by Hylton Nel’s world.

 

Accessories are both playful and practical, crafted with customary precision and elevated élan. Footwear focuses on the traditional working shoe: the clog. The collection reimagines clogs as enclosed shoes or boots, handcrafted from elevated materials such as beech wood and calf leather. The wooden sole, modified with rubber for comfort, morphs into signature Derbys and biker boots. Studded decorations on the clogs, inspired by Hylton Nel’s ‘sigils,’ also influence the studded embroidery on clothing and bags.

 

An icon of Dior style for 25 years, the Saddle bag is the main carrier of the collection. Its construction is occasionally softened, with its curvilinear contours informing other silhouettes. The bags combine humble and noble materials, with hardwearing canvas counterpointed by raffia or leather. The cloche hats, designed by Stephen Jones in collaboration with Earth Age, a South African company based in Cape Town, appear as a final craftful stop. Local craftspeople were commissioned to hand-crochet each cloche, with ceramic beads applied in Paris, symbolizing the union of differing ateliers without hierarchy; the homespun and the salon, the global with the local. The artisans’ skill, intent, and pride in their work unite all.

 

Nel’s ceramics will be on show at Stevenson until the 10th of August as part of a mini-retrospective “Things Made Over Time”.

 

 

 

The plates, bowls, vases and sculptures included in this exhibition are shown chronologically as a timeline, starting with works created in the late 1960s in Kent, and concluding with plates made in 2024. Since the early 1990s Nel has inscribed the date of the firing onto his objects, their day of birth, so to speak. The works thus become like entries in the artist’s diary, memorialising the day, the thought, the sensibility.

 

Alongside these autobiographical notes, Things Made Over Time highlights the combination of curiosity, aesthetics and utility that is key to Nel’s practice. For Nel, there is no colour, shape, glaze or decoration that is incidental or without significance. He sees the repetition inherent to his vessels as infinite prompts for variation, stating, ‘Most of what I make are plates. The same shape over and over, but like people each one is different.’

 

 

Hylton Nel was born in 1941 in N’kana, Zambia, and now lives and works on the outskirts of Calitzdorp in the Klein Karoo.

Things Made Over Time is Nel’s sixth solo show at Stevenson, following Bowls in Johannesburg (2022). His work has been the subject of various survey exhibitions, including This plate is what I have to say at Charleston, East Sussex, UK (2023); Hylton Nel at 80, Fine Art Society, London, UK (2021) and Hylton Nel: Retrospective Exhibition at the Standard Bank National Arts Festival, Grahamstown, which travelled to the Tatham Art Gallery, Pietermaritzburg; Johannes Stegmann Art Gallery, University of the Free State and King George VI Art Gallery, Port Elizabeth (2001-2002). Other notable solo shows include Hylton Nel: For Use and Display, The Fine Art Society, London (2017); New Ceramics by Hylton Nel, The Fine Art Society, London, UK (1997); Hylton Nel - A Prayer for Good Governance, The Fine Art Society, London, UK (1996); and Gay Rights Re-Writes, Gertrude Posel Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa (1986).

 

 

Images and press packets supplied by Stevenson Gallery.