Radical modernity: Kim Jones on curating Charleston for Sotheby's

The announcement earlier in the year that Kim Jones was to be the vice president of the Bloomsbury group hub, Charleston, was the culmination of a life long passion for the fashion designer. Enamoured with the modernist home and studio of Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant since visiting on a school trip, he has been working closely with the trust since 2018, from arranging a photoshoot with Kate Moss there to mark his first womenswear collection for Fendi, to translating drawings from the house’s archive into a summer menswear collection for Dior.

Now, as one of his first jobs as newly appointed vice president, Jones is curating a two-part selling and loan exhibition at Sotheby’s, supplemented with pieces from his own personal collection. ‘Radical Modernity: From Bloomsbury to Charleston’ sees a partnership with Charleston, uniting drawings, paintings, literature, furniture and ceramics, from artists and authors including Virginia Woolf, Vanessa Bell, Roger Fry, Henry Lamb and Duncan Grant.

‘I must have been around 14 when I first visited,’ says Jones. ‘We were doing some drawing in the garden, and I remember being completely transfixed by how these people lived. I didn't really understand it at the time, but I thought it was really cool. I became really obsessed by it, and then also by Virginia Woolf. I gradually linked them together, and it became a lifelong passion.’

Defined by a spirit of artistic collaboration, Charleston’s championing of eclectic art forms, and how they shape a life, is something Jones has referenced ‘subliminally’ throughout his career, he says. ‘I didn't even realise I was doing it. It was that, and two of the key figures in my design work who made me realise you need to work with others to get the best results - one being Michael Kopelman at Gimme Five and the other Marc Jacobs, who was my boss at Louis Vuitton.’

It is a collaborative ethos which extends to the design of the Sotheby’s exhibition itself, which nods to the rich colour palette of Charleston’s vivid rooms. ‘I've looked at it in a modern way. I took the colours of the dining room walls because I love the darkness,’ adding it also warms up the space in his concrete London home. ‘I think it's interesting to take that contrast and put it into modern concepts.’

‘The key really has been going through my personal collection of objects and pieces, and giving a narrative of what the timeline is, through objects. It's nice when people see it, as it’s normally in drawers or boxes or protected somewhere. As a collector, you like people to see what you have. You like to share things because otherwise they're just boxes and they don’t mean anything. When you’re teaching people about new things, they need to see them, whether it's clothing or anything else.’

Jones has loaned an eclectic array of pieces from his own significant private collection, including literature, sketches, pieces from the Omega Workshop and embroidery, all which feel as contemporary a century on. Why does he think Charleston and its almost mythical legacy is still relevant today? Three reasons, he says. ‘Collaboration, conversation and consideration - and how they all consider each other.’

Radical Modernity: From Bloomsbury to Charleston' is on view 9 - 26 November at Sotheby's, London

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