How weird is it to think that the president of France, Emmanuel Macron, aged 40, was born only five years before “Forever Young” by Alphaville—the 1984 New Wave/synth hit Kris Van Assche chose to close his Christian Dior Homme show today? Van Assche, a Belgian in Paris, is just one year older than the man who runs France. That’s pause for thought, the principal one (since we’re dealing with fashion) being along the lines of a) the enduring importance of the two-piece suit to masculine power in the civic, corporate, and global private wealth spheres, and b) the synonymity of Christian Dior as a brand with French national identity. In other words, there’s no way Van Assche cannot deal face-on with the suits.
He did it, perhaps self-knowingly, by reflecting on the boy inside his middle-aged peers—the ex-raver generation which is seizing positions of power in the 21st century. The jacket Van Assche was wearing backstage had a black label tacked to the top of one sleeve cuff, reading “Christian Dior Atelier,” a sartorial heritage signal indicating handmade tailoring values (as well as a bit of an inside-out Martin Margiela-ism). So far, so manly.
But bless him, in this age of roiling gender politics, Van Assche’s first instinct had been to bring in an expert woman from the Christian Dior women’s atelier to help him work on how to adapt the manual know-how of Dior’s late-’40s and early-’50s women’s tailoring, and turn it into “sharp” suits for men. “I wanted to make it very body-conscious. With streetwear, more or less everything has become blurred, loose,” he said.
But what about keeping the boy-thoughts alive? Van Assche returned to his own teen memories, of “the first tattoo you got when you were 15,” and how it was clubbing in the ’90s, layering short-sleeved T-shirts over long-sleeves. And the baggy but high-waist jeans; and the other kids, who stuck to polo shirts and synthetic anoraks with terrible prints. In fact, Van Assche was never a clubber, but he knew all about it, from his bedroom. Yet all that stuff is now idolized by a second generation as classic vintage style.
Maybe Emmanuel Macron is just the same; occupied with studying as he was, yet still hyperaware that there’s a young generation coming up who might buy into new politics, new style. On the Christian Dior runway, both generations were represented—the original cool ’90s guys who are now wearing the suits and carrying the briefcases, and generation Z, who everyone and his strategist now wants to capture.
