Could it be something related to the changing of the guard in French politics? Possibly yes, possibly no, but both sides of the house of Dior have been distinctly turning towards the youth vote recently. After Maria Grazia Chiuri sent out young girls, wearing denim and ’68-er leather berets, in her women’s ready-to-wear show, Kris Van Assche had a lineup of teen boys at Dior Homme. As the house celebrates the 70th anniversary since Christian Dior’s revolutionary New Look, Van Assche is consciously looking for what can be extracted from the past to make it relevant to a new generation. “The energy of youth is appealing to me as a fortysomething,” he said before the show. “The first chunk of the collection is about the DNA of Dior, which is the black suit and the white shirt. How do I go about it, how do I reinvent it, make it for the future, and deconstruct it? There’s a lot being said about the suit being over, but I’m totally convinced it’s not. It’s just a question of making the right proposals.”
In a strange way, there was a romantic subtext to it—as well as a deliberate logo-emphasizing pitch to commercial broadcasting. Van Assche imagined the life-changing moment when college boys wake up to the sexual power of dressing up, “When you become aware the way you make an effort in how you dress can make a difference with the girls.” A “prom” rosette was pinned to the lapel of a black waistcoat, made from a tape with 3 Rue de Marignan, the address of the Dior men’s studio, woven into it. “The time you get to stay out for the first time” was evoked when the boys headed out on sneakers into a set laid with green turf under a night sky made of a symbolic hanging of black plastic.
Close up, the tailoring was ingeniously made and subtly coded. The first black ottoman suit contained an homage to Dior’s New Look Bar Jacket with a curved-in body-line. Look four, a reinvented tailcoat, was cut in spiralling panels, “on the bias, draped around the body like a dress, really,” Van Assche explained. (He didn’t spell it out, but surely it was a reference to John Galliano’s contribution to Dior history?) The boy who was wearing it for his big night out also had on what Van Assche called a pair of “little gym shorts,” in the ottoman fabric.
Those short shorts. The sexual objectification of the male leg has been a controversial talking point of the menswear shows. Van Assche segued more of them into the show with the second section of the narrative where sportswear took over, or as he described it, “The contrasts which are more what Kris Van Assche brings. The striped knit, the sweatshirts, the varsity jacket. It’s supposed to make you think of a school uniform really. The time you start to go out and get into trouble.” There were tailoring-sportswear hybrids; half baseball jacket, half blazer; a jacket with short polo shirt sleeves. “It’s very street in a way,” Van Assche concluded, “But the work is very precious.”
