Fashion Theory, Volume 17, Issue 1, pp. 7 – 26 DOI: 10.2752/175174113X13502904240659 Reprints available directly from the Publishers. Photocopying permitted by licence only. © 2013 Bloomsbury. Boys Keep Swinging: The Fashion Iconography of Hedi Slimane Nick Rees-Roberts Nick Rees-Roberts lectures in Film and Cultural Studies in the Department of French at the University of Bristol. He is the author of French Queer Cinema (Edinburgh University Press, 2008). He is currently writing a book on fashion film in the global and digital age for Berg. n.rees-roberts@bristol.ac.uk Abstract The arrival of designer Hedi Slimane at Christian Dior in 2000 marked an epoch change in men’s style. Slimane’s reputation is founded on hav- ing streamlined and rejuvenated the male silhouette through the promo- tion of a skinny style appropriated from youth subcultures. Slimane’s rebranding of the Dior menswear line (from the fusty Christian Dior Monsieur to the hip Dior Homme) adapted a range of urban street styles to suit the in-house tradition of classicism and bourgeois elegance. This article sets out to assess the designer’s conscious reworking of mas- culinity, replacing virile men with skinny boys, perceived as the clearest 3085-230-002.indd 7 11/17/2012 10:29:23