Kris Van Assche’s Dior Homme clothes shared the stage with a few neon-lit skate ramps and half-pipes, and a giant panoramic film created by the photographer Willy Vanderperre. The latter wrapped the backdrop, and flashed images of the models who featured in the show. Van Assche had them walking; Vanderperre dancing, their pogoing forms dressed in the same Fall collection that was whizzing past our eyes. Quite meta. The film was made on Thursday evening. “It’s kind of a miracle,” murmured Van Assche, pensive but seemingly pleased.
That here-and-there sense of disconnect between the big screen and reality before our eyes related to the narrative of Van Assche’s collection: memory, without nostalgia. “Let’s not look back and think it’s so great,” said Van Assche. “It’s about keeping, and taking into the future.” Dior is a house steeped in its own history, saturated even. In the past, Van Assche has thrashed to find a connecting thread to link his work with that of Dior’s feminine ethos. Sometimes it has worked—a collection smothered with lily of the valley a few seasons ago gave an arresting jolt. Another, scribbled with Monsieur Dior’s handwriting, seemed just silly. This time, Van Assche shrugged off that weighty heritage. Or at least, he didn’t seem so weighed down by it. “Mr. Dior was not a starting point,” he emphasized. “He’s always there, but I wanted it to be much more about today.”
Today? That’s debatable. Van Assche looked to skate culture—which felt more 1996 than 2016—and mid-’80s new wave. The result was a toss-up between those two—a hybrid, one of the favored nouns of the Fall season. Sometimes it was simply juxtaposition: a skater pant bottoming a slender suit; a narrow white shirt with thumbs shoved through cuffs like fingerless skate gloves; a down coat in a red, black, and white Kraftwerk palette. Skate generally surrendered utility stuff, cargo pockets and pants, lumberjack checks, and looser volumes; new wave was the Dior Homme template of slender suiting. The conversation between past and present was underscored with ribbon neckties: Did you see 19th-century dandies, or Colonel Sanders of Kentucky Fried Chicken fame? Perception is everything.
Van Assche, I suspect, perceived lots of these clothes as young, hip, and cool. But I’m not sure that’s what Dior is, or needs to be. “The ennobling of materials gives a rough edge,” said Van Assche. It was evidently a line he liked—and granted, it was the perfect description of tailoring embroidered to look frayed, or with filigree silver chain applied as a windowpane check. Those pieces looked good—not young, nor cool, but as items they will appeal to people who like their fashion painstakingly worked and breathtakingly expensive. Ironically, one of the collection’s finest moments came when Van Assche did acknowledge Dior—he applied his embroidered signature to a sweatshirt, so it wound up looking like a sly take on the slogan of the skate brand Stüssy. Totally Dior, but not very “Dior.”
The best moments in Van Assche’s collection hit a similar note: a checked jacket, wide cut; a camel coat; a thin black suit. They bore a Dior signature, but kind of felt like everyday clothes. This collection seemed less self-conscious than prior efforts; somehow more free. And when these outfits were broken down into individual garments—on the rails backstage, or as fragmented imagery in Vanderperre’s compelling background film—they had an appeal.
