Kris Van Assche, the rigorous Belgian who designs Dior Homme, erected a funfair at the center of the label’s Spring 2017 show. Why not? “It’s the Sinksenfoor,” said he, referencing an Antwerp institution. “When I was a kid in Antwerp, we used to love going to the funfair, all these new wave kids, these punk kids.”
But really, that funfair was a giant neon red-herring. Van Assche wasn’t about to clown it out, but rather used the flashing lights and helter-skeltering metal as a backdrop to a collection that was physically dark, if not metaphorically. It was all about the contrast.
Contrast is important to Van Assche. He rarely plays any inspiration straight and direct. Unearthing them all can feel like taking a turn on a topsy-turvy rollercoaster. This time, Van Assche oscillated between the aforementioned Punk and New Wave with sports elements which, he feels, are representative of today. There were also the tailored suits that Dior Homme originally built its menswear business on, and which are still demanded by plenty of clients. Those references were blended together, sometimes simultaneously into a single outfit. “A synthesis is more interesting than copying,” said Van Assche, by way of explanation.
You understand his point of view: why resurrect '80s fashions without any injection of today? And why limit your output when there’s a multitude of men, and markets, and interconnected needs and demands? Because another word for limit is focus, and mixing together multiple styles can wind up looking chaotic and over-designed. Van Assche fell foul of the latter when even the bread-and-butter suits of Dior came tricked out with D-rings, covered with metallic staples, or criss-crossed with sneaker laces looping through eyelets. Those were especially intricate and doubtlessly labor-intensive: but wearable, or modern? Not so.
Van Assche obviously wants to break free of the restrictions of tailoring. “There’s no need to put a classic suit on the stage,” he said beforehand, explaining his tailoring shorn of sleeves or teamed with gargantuan saggy skate pants, a hangover from Fall’s half-pipe-meets-haute couture story. The message is that the pin-neat Dior tailoring does exist, but Van Assche doesn’t feel the need to show off that strength. It’s not as crazy at it may first seem: it links, cannily, to a fall-off in the market for formalized menswear, particularly in key markets like China. It also explains a general shift towards sportswear—in this Dior show, the relative ease of bomber jackets and narrow jeans stood out as contemporary.
Suits versus sports is possibly the big story of menswear today. Van Assche’s clothes, lurching after an elusive fusion, wound up occupying a strange hinterland, not quite satisfying either. They also bear the label Dior, which comes at a hefty price, the kind of figures generally invested in plain-speaking clothes like a good suit, a leather jacket or a cashmere sweater. That’s not an argument against blurring boundaries, but Van Assche should ask himself who he’s really hoping to satisfy with his cross-pollination. His clients, or just himself? Fashion isn’t a fun fair, it’s a business. You want clothes at the end of the day, not to be taken for a creative ride.
