Hylton Nel, Kim Jones and Dior

At 83 years old, it must be quite something to be able to tick off your bucket list, the chance to collaborate on a Dior Haute Couture show in Paris, especially if you're not even really into fashion.

That's what South African “potter” (he doesn't like being called a “ceramicist”) Hylton Nel effusively tells me on his return home from the French capital this week after a whirlwind five-day stint that took in being hailed as the celebrated artist of the one of the most anticipated shows of the year.

The Dior Men's Summer 2025 collection showed on Friday last week and was immediately trending on social media, thanks partly to Nel's huge totemic creatures that lined the catwalk, dominating the show. Writing in Wallpaper magazine, Jack Moss called the effect a “homespun monumentalism”, while in The Guardian, Chloe Mac Donnell wrote, “They [Nel's artworks] appeared to have been put through a supersizing kiln, with six gargantuan sculptures including a nonplussed-looking cat and a nude female torso fused with a feline head, dotted around the vast catwalk”. Nel's artwork was also used as decorative motifs printed or studded through clothes in the collection. 

“It was just amazing,” Nel says of the experience that came about because of the more than decade long friendship he’s cultivated with the creative director of Dior Homme, Kim Jones. “Kim started buying my work before we met, and then, when we did meet, we got along so well. He's done an amazing job of translating my work into his designs, don't you think?”

Nel says Jones visited him at his old, ramshackle farmhouse in the Karoo ahead of the Paris show, bringing along his team. “They all came to my studio,” says Nel. “One was an expert in textile ... there were experts in everything to do with the show. Each one had their special area of expertise. To see it all come together into that extraordinary production was just amazing.”

Jones first met Nel indirectly, through his friends, photographer Pieter Hugo and the gallerist Marc Barben (a director at the Stevenson gallery, which represents Nel). “I met the work before the man,” Jones wrote in the booklet about the collection, which was placed on the seats of the show, located in the grounds of Paris’ Val-de-Grâce. “But it was through his ceramics that I had a very good idea of who the man was — they are full of life, with his life so very present in them,” he continues. “I was intrigued and knew I had to meet him in person.”

Jones first met Barben, predating the latter’s role at the Stevenson gallery. “Life is full of serendipity,” says Barben. “I met Kim before joining the gallery as an intern and then, when I was working at the front desk of the gallery one Saturday, he walked in with his entourage of Louis Vuitton people — the fashion house at which Kim worked before he joined Dior. We started a relationship which developed when he became interested in Hilton's work.”

“Kim is a collector of things,” Barben adds. His homes are peppered with pieces by Francis Bacan, Paul Gaugin, Henri Matisse, René Magritte and Donald Judd furniture. He owns the largest collection of Virgina Woolf books and letters in the world. He bought Freddie Mercury’s sketch pad and cigarette case, and also Star Wars figurines and Bacon and Lucian Freud artworks.

“And he collects Hylton Nel pieces quite seriously,” Barben comments. Jones introduced Nel to Nathaniel Hepburn, the director of Charleston, a gathering point for some of the 20th century’s most radical artists, writers and thinkers known collectively as the Bloomsbury group.

“Kim loves the Bloomsbury group [a group of English writers, intellectuals, philosophers and artists in the early 20th century],” says Barben. Nel's latest big exhibition was held at Charleston in Sussex, England, under the title Hylton Nel: This plate is what I have to say.

I asked Barben to articulate what it is about Nel's work that has so inspired Jones. “It's too wide ranging for me to say,” he answers. “It's the commitment to art over time, the love of animals, the gay elements ... and that his work is so wide ranging. Kim and Hylton also share a deep appreciation of Bloomsbury and a love of collecting.” 

Jones writes in the booklet, “I've collected ceramics for many years, mainly Bloomsbury's Omega Workshop, and I have always liked a way of shaping them — this happens quite literally in what Hylton does. His soft tones, his colour palette and what is portrayed — animals, nature, people — are all a reflection of his way of being in South Africa, both joyful and melancholy. I recognised so much in the work, both geographically and personally. The first thing I bought was a plate with a dog on it — it looked exactly like my dog Dexter.”

Jones was born in London, but spent his childhood in Ecuador, the Caribbean and in Africa, following his father's job as a hydrologist (a person who studies how water moves across and through the Earth's crust). “Growing up in Africa, living with little lizards, snakes and elephants or being chased by baboons — it never really goes away,” he told The New York Times in 2011.

Hearing about Nel from his friend Hugo, they set off on a trip to go and meet the eccentric Calitzdorp artist. “It is a six-hour journey from Cape Town to the Karoo, into the desert of Calitzdorp, a small farming community where Hylton has lived for many years,” wrote Jones.

“I fell in love with Hylton and his home straight away — I immediately saw how he was fully living his work. In his house, in his studio, everywhere you look there is something, and always something to be inspired by. Like Hylton, I am a magpie, an inveterate collector. His house and his studio are one, there is no separation — what he does and how he lives is really who he is.”

Inspired by this idea, Jones was determined to make this Summer 2025 collection his most personal to date. The first model marched onto the catwalk clutching an original Nel plate, borrowed from Jones’ own collection. You can’t be more personal than that, wrote one commentator.

Another model wore a ceramic collar (apparently created by Nel himself), a piece of sculpture-cum-jewellery, which topped off a fluid suit, and there were other motifs from Nel’s work; loosely drawn dogs and birds, which became pins, intarsia knits and embroidery, paying homage to the overflowing shelves of ceramics in the artist’s home.

Nel's home, filled with a lifetime of making and collecting, was captured by Hugo in the booklet for guests of the show to keep. In it Jones wrote, “What struck me was his [Nel's] knowledge, a world of knowledge from 18th-century Staffordshire to Chinese Tang Dynasty pottery and a whole load of ceramics in between. Influences on his techniques are many and varied. And I was immediately attached to the work — it spoke to me of my love of Africa, my love of the medium and my fascination with Hylton himself.”

Nel raved about the show. “It was surreal to see my work blown up to such epic proportions. It was mind blowing,” he says. “And Kim Jones, well yes, I find him to be a very nice man.”

Barben was equally impressed by the show's reception. “It was raining a lot when we walked into the venue, and then the soundtrack played; Kate Bush's Cloudbusting: 'But every time it rains/You're here in my head/Like the sun coming out/I just know that something good is gonna happen'. After that there was sunshine, which signified to me the transformative power of the show. It was about joy and optimism. It was surreal,” he says. “And Hylton is trending.”

Barben has also put together a mini-retrospective that launched at Stevenson gallery. It's called Things Made Over Time and will show Nel's works chronologically as a timeline, starting with works created in the 1960s in Kent (the earliest work is Tiger from his time in Antwerp in 1968 “It's his earliest 'cat' really,” says Barben) and concluding with plates made in 2024.

The exhibition was designed to run concurrently with the fashion collaboration. Jones wrote in the booklet, “These are the cats that spoke to me the most — they meowed to me”.

The exhibition opened yesterday and runs to August 10 at Stevenson in Cape Town. Click here for more info.