Dior Men’s creative director Kim Jones has been busy injecting art into his collections since his first season, when he debuted a redesign of the House’s bee motif. New York artist KAWS created that, complete with his signature ‘X’ed out eyes – it was a hit. Then Jones doubled down and staged the brand’s first Cruise collection in Tokyo, complete with a towering, sexual chrome cyborg by Japanese illustrator Hajime Sorayama. Sorayama’s futuristic figures were distilled into saddle bags and graphic tees, presented alongside Japanese motifs like the cherry blossoms – silver and pink: v Dior. Then for FW 2019, Raymond Pettibon, a less well known artist, unless you’re a fan of Punk music. Pettibon is, I gather from his opinion, for better or worse, most well-known for his illustration of record covers for Punk bands like Blag Flag and Sonic Youth. Pettibon is an unexpected choice. Jones has roots in streetwear and he’s often drawn inspiration from pop culture. Both KAWS and Sorayama fit neatly into those tropes. Jones has said he considers KAWS chic. Soroyama is certainly chic. As is Dior. But Pettibon is by all accounts that somewhat disheveled and retiring kind of artist. In the Dior-supplied interview below, you’ll see, he answers the interminably flaccid, trite, yet occasionally forgivable question, “Where does your inspiration come from?” with an answer that is as honest and pragmatic as it is resignedly and mildly indignant – “My inspiration comes from my mother.” He was born, after all.

With a career spanning decades – he started drawing at around age 12, which was fifty years ago – his work is often socially or politically charged. Recurring subjects include Presidents Regan and Nixon, Gumby the clay animation character, Vavoom the friendly Inuit character from Felix the Cat, and Charles Manson. He grew up in South California by the sea, so waves feature heavily in his work, and also the violence of LA and the police brutality towards black youths in its more impoverished neighborhoods. So, when “Becky the Intern” bounces along questions as broad and uniformed as “Where do you get your inspiration from?”, well, what do you expect? A bevy of borderline-saucy responses.

But, not surprisingly, the Pettibon pieces in Jones’ collection are as deeply chic as you’d expect of Dior. And his anti-establishmentarianisms aren’t obvious either. Re-imaginings of big cat prints permeated throughout, a Mona Lisa-inspired art work closed the show, and a shoulder-fastened outerwear vest embroidered and beaded with the face of an owl, and Pettibon’s signature script beneath (“With their own light and lash I have drawn them”) was almost effortlessly poetic, excepting the 1,000 plus man hours of beading it took to create it in the atelier.