A day at the fair
The rollercoaster centrepiece of Dior Homme’s spring/summer 2017 show paid tribute to its creative director’s formative years. Sinksenfoor — one of Belgium’s largest funfairs — was the old stomping ground of goths, new wave and punk kids, and Kriss Van Assche remembers it fondly. “This season there is a sense of collective consciousness to the collection — a remix of shared boyhood memories,” he says. “I am interested in a synthesis of generations and filtering subcultures through my own lens to tell a new story.”
Van Assche has been steering his collections in an increasingly sportswear direction. Trimly cut blazers sit atop baggy skater pants, buffalo plaid button-down shirts feature polo collars and suiting with sneaker laces threaded through grommets are a study in contrasts; married opposites that push and pull, all playing to his theme of order and disorder.
Van Assche stumbled across Japanese artist Toru Kamei while working on the collection and was instantly drawn to the dark, gothic treatment of Kamei’s floral still-life paintings. He incorporated Kamei’s moody botanicals in patches that cleverly look like they had been stapled onto pants and jackets.
“There can be elements of new wave music, punk or even goth while being sporty and contemporary at the same time,” explains Van Assche. “Modernity is inevitably a blend of ideas and synthesis.”
