One block north of The Arc De Triomphe, past a neoclassical entranceway, up a spiral staircase, and through a pair of double doors, models circle in and out of a salon, sometimes in runway-grade outfits, sometimes in nothing but short black robes with a stately “DIOR” emblazoned on the back. At the rear of the room, within a tighter orbit of staff, the artistic director of Dior Men sits alone at the dead center of an American Idol-esque judges table.

“You get a headache from being under these lights for so long,” Kim Jones mumbles, asking someone for an aspirin. Seventy-two hours out from his highly anticipated summer 2020 menswear presentation, the British designer is taking a final pass at the entire collection. A photo studio is set up on the opposite side of the salon, each look photographed and pinned to a board next to the designer. Slouched yet alert, the 39-year-old Jones is dressed like a modern-day Medici on his way to the bodega: dark T-shirt, fat diamond necklace, and tailored jogging pants that taper down into a pair of deconstructed blue Air Jordans designed by his friend Virgil Abloh. “What we're stressing out about today is finding all the models,” design director Lucy Beeden tells me. “Because Kim wants an army of 49 boys and he doesn't like changes when we've got delicate fabrics like this.”

A tall model in a cream trench with what looks like a giant blue ink stain on its shoulder walks into the center of the showroom. “Do we have a bag for that?” Jones asks. “I just checked, and no,” a member of his retinue replies, “I didn't think so.” When I turn to ask Jones about the blue detail on the coat, he explains: “It's a kind of embroidery, hand-sprayed with dye and then plissé-pleated into thousands of pleats.” Moments later someone is holding the coat in front of my face so that I can examine its meticulous detailing, likely sewn over hundreds of hours. When I ask Jones about the appeal of microscopic plissés in an era when most fashion is consumed via Instagram feed, he replies dutifully, “Couture is the brief of the house, and Dior is all I think about.”

Having consulted and designed for more than a dozen fashion brands in a career of less than two decades, Jones thinks of his work as commercial biology: the process of cloning a brand's DNA into something more relevant, exciting, and shoppable than ever before. “I look at things some people write about creativity, and they're like, ‘It's all led by marketing,’ ” Jones says. “But it's kind of an ignorant thing when people write stuff like that. I like working to a creative brief and being commercial. It's the path you choose, and not everyone is going to be Rei Kawakubo. She's Rei Kawakubo, and she's brilliant. We have targets to reach, and I find that exciting.”