Pondering the future of the suit has been a recurring theme running through the Paris menswear shows. So to Dior Homme, a house that is one of the top resources of reflex choice for the men of the French corporate establishment—nay, the world—and those who are on the rungs below: A Dior tie, at the very least, is a safe, neutral, recognized international passport for businessmen everywhere. But what of the next generation, or, frankly, those men who are now in their 30s and 40s, who’ve been slobbing around in sneakers, jeans, and sweatshirts and making a living out of the tech economy? May they be reformed?
Kris Van Assche has been thinking about that. “People are talking a lot about how young men don’t like wearing tailoring now,” he said. “But maybe they’re not giving them the right tailoring. I wanted to concentrate on that.” The last time cool young men actually did wear tailoring—in a pose-y, competitive, pop cultural one-upmanship sort of a way—was the late ’70s and early ’80s, the time of New Wave through to Jean Paul Gaultier, at the birth of new style magazines and the music-video medium of MTV. That’s where Van Assche began. It helps that he comes from Belgium, where the idea of style subcultures and the principles of underground integrity have persisted forever. His cross-generational antidote was a tailoring-proud collection he labeled HarDior, shorthand, to him, for the sybaritic escapism of hard-core boy clubbing.
Van Assche boiled the opening section down to a supersharp pinstripe jacket with three-quarter sleeves and wider, slightly more fluid pants, cropped at the ankle, accessorized with leather gloves, a shirt, and a narrow tie. To an older person, that might act as a dog whistle to midlife men recalling misspent youths, posing in clubs. Or—and here’s the Dior opportunity, surely—it might speak to the new generation of dandies of South Korea and China: the men with the youth, physiques, inclination, and income to value this look, and to do it full justice.
The collection roamed from there through rave and gabba references—also the cause of nostalgia for the originals in the audience who’d lived through the ’90s. Here, of course, the garb that once populated muddy fields and illegal warehouse parties was extravagantly upgraded into such things as luxurious capes. There’s a market for the flamboyant stuff, for sure. But the tailoring? When slightly eased up, in a store, you actually could imagine the smart dad falling for his former self in these jackets, if not his teenage son.
