CITYist

Kris Van Assche began his career at Dior Homme stuck between a rock and a hard place. Or perhaps better said, he has spent the past three years working diligently to liberate the label from the rock star presence of the label’s former designer Hedi Slimane. So it should come as no surprise that Van Assche’s designs for Dior Homme have been dark. Very dark.

Asked about the stark color palette he has employed at the label, Van Assche is bracingly blunt. “A few dashes of color can electrify a collection from time to time,” he notes, “But I think the idea of turning menswear into a color-fest to be a pointless one. Loud prints and shocking colors belong to womenswear. I want to create men’s fashion to be worn.”

With that goal in mind, Van Assche has taken the label away from its popish flirtations (despite a recent, playful experiment with some distinctly MC Hammer-ish flowing pant designs). In keeping with the great tradition of Belgian fashion design—which has produced such starkly conservative radicals as Martin Margiela, Raf Simons, and Dries Van Noten (for whom Van Assche feels particular affinity)—Van Assche’s designs for the iconic label have abandoned his mentor’s vogue-ish trend sampling in favor of a commitment to the classic art of tailored menswear. In some ways, Van Assche must feel as if he is serving two traditions: that of the Belgian design school in which he was indoctrinated as a student at Antwerp Royal Academy and the more playfully urbane approach of Slimane, for whom he apprenticed for seven years at both YSL and Dior Homme.

With that dual legacy in mind, Van Assche says he has strived “to create men’s fashion that is innovative and modern; to find the balance between menswear’s classic heritage and unexpected offerings.” Rather than making designs that are expressly Mod-ish or grungy, Van Assche aims for a men’s couture where “Everything is played out in the twists, in the use of transparency and layering, in the unusual proportions. I’m looking to invent a new elegance with a style that’s just right.”

Instead of feeling any pressure to maintain a tradition at Dior Homme, he says he has felt liberated. “Working at Dior means receiving by association the revolutionary and anti-conformist spirit of Monsieur [Christian] Dior,” the 33-year-old designer is happy to report, though that freedom comes with certain responsibilities as well, because, “you have to move ahead and prove your creativity.”

Thus far, the overarching tone of Van Assche’s designs for Dior Homme has been a Gothic-chic that wouldn’t seem entirely out of place in a (retro futuristic) vampire movie. With color out of the equation, Van Assche has focused on cutting his designs to create coolly innovative draping. “I prefer working on volumes, fluidity, and a certain hang,” he says, “To arrive at the urbane elegance that interests me.” It is this lightness and variety of texture that Van Assche believes obviates any need for the cartoonish color palette that has recently dominated men’s sportswear. “I don’t find my collections severe,” he says. “They have an obvious sensuality, but one with backbone.”

When Van Assche speaks of ‘backbone’ he could well be speaking of the art of fine tailoring as practiced within Dior, which provides the support system for his supple usage of materials. “At Dior I have the good fortune of having ateliers capable of working with very complex or very fine fabrics, or quite unusual technical materials,” he says. “We can, in quite an elegant way, change a black suit by playing on its transparency with different blacks, [showing the] shine and stripe and herringbone details.” In hidden ways, this experimentation with materials can be quite whimsical, such as “In my last collection, [where] I even used the beige canvas normally found in the suit interior as a fabric in its own right [because] I wanted, at the same time as paying homage to the work of the ateliers, to utilize the beauty of these hidden materials.”

This summer, Van Assche’s hidden side was made quite evident when he was invited to exhibit at the Hyeres Festival of Fashion and Photography in the South of France. In addition to slide presentations of his work, Van Assche snuck in more personal details, such as backstage photos, examples from his mood board and even images of his boyfriend. Most important, perhaps, was a tribute to the tailors at Dior Homme, who make possible the forward-looking traditionalism of his designs. When it comes to the future of men’s couture, Van Assche is positively sunny, raving “It’s a blessing to live in an age when men are looking for sophistication . . . when they really want to get dressed up.”