It’s a good time to be Kris Van Assche. Now entering his 10th season at Dior Homme, recent years have seen the Belgian designer emerging from the long, impeccably cut shadow cast by his predecessor, proposing a discrete new vision for the house in the process.
As spring/summer’s parade of pure white attests, Van Assche has shifted the focus towards a lighter – though no less earnest – style, loosening up the house’s forbidding, breathe-in silhouette in favour of something more fluid and free thinking. Pairing an ongoing desire for minimalism with an implicit sense of luxury and craft, his endeavours have, at times, been met with a mixed response, yet today suggest bold new possibilities for the brand. Meanwhile, his own label continues to operate at that familiar yet ever-alluring intersection between adolescence and adulthood. Perhaps Van Assche doesn’t play the game as much as some of his contemporaries do and, as he himself candidly concedes, nothing can be taken for granted (his main ambition? “Simply to keep going”). But considering the high stakes and even higher turnaround of most French houses, Van Assche has, to all intents and purposes, achieved establishment status. Right now, at any rate, the man is calm, collected and inspired…
GLENN WALDRON: “Hello Kris, what are you up to right now?”
KRIS VAN ASSCHE: “It’s the last week of work on the January shows so I’m basically rushing around, trying to get everything done before Christmas.”
GLENN WALDRON: “Is it crazy?”
KRIS VAN ASSCHE: “It’s not crazy exactly, but only because I don’t let it get crazy. I’m a very constant worker.”
GLENN WALDRON: “A big list maker?”
KRIS VAN ASSCHE: “Oh yes, constantly. I really need things to be in a certain order and, as long as I can finish those lists, then everything is okay. I kind of freak out when my agenda gets all mixed up and then I lose control. But I have to keep telling myself, ‘I’m fine, it’s all fine.’”
GLENN WALDRON: “You’ve been doing all this for quite a while. Surely it’s a well-oiled machine by now.”
KRIS VAN ASSCHE: “Ha, well, I’ve had my own label for eight years and I’ve been at Dior for almost five, so yeah, I’ve gotten used to a certain working rhythm. But then each new season has new issues that need to be researched and worked out. That’s also what keeps it interesting, of course. Each season has new surprises.”
GLENN WALDRON: “What kind of stuff were you thinking about for the spring/summer collection?”
KRIS VAN ASSCHE: “The title was Less and More. I had been doing this whole ‘Less Is More’ thing for the two seasons before that. In a way, it was about creating a blank page. When I got here, I didn’t really get the chance to do that. I mean, that’s the story of me at Dior, isn’t it? Usually, when you take over a house, it’s because the house is dying. But that wasn’t the case here. I took over a success story. And you can’t just tip everything in the garbage, burn things down and start from scratch. You can’t do that… So it just took much longer to get to that blank page – more of an evolution than a revolution. So that’s kind of what I was doing for the seasons when it was all about less is more – bringing it back to what I considered essential. And I kind of reached that with the winter season, where everything was extremely luxurious – very minimal and fluid and comfortable. Once that was done, I thought, okay, less is more is fine, but how about adding a little? So that was a new turning point. Thinking more about getting it right rather than just getting it minimal.”
GLENN WALDRON: “What’s your start point for any collection?”
KRIS VAN ASSCHE: “It’s always my work with the atelier and a certain notion of working process. The fact that the first 10 outfits for spring/summer were white comes from the white fabric – the toile – we use to do the first try-outs. I’m one of those lucky people who has an in-house atelier and the fact that we can fit twice a week and constantly change and alter things is very inspiring. It was a way of saying that, at Dior, the working process is very interesting and you could actually put the working process on a catwalk.”
GLENN WALDRON: “Was there a moment when things started to click for you at Dior? “
KRIS VAN ASSCHE: “Oh yes. It was the summer show five seasons ago. For the first time, I started to loosen up on the clothes and get rid of this stiff frame with which the Dior clothes were always made. I started showing transparent jackets, turning jackets inside out, trying to rework the insides of the jackets to make them more fluid on the outside. People were always talking to me about respecting a certain heritage, but it was at the point that I realised the real heritage at Dior was not the silhouette but a certain know-how. That opened up doors and windows to something new for me. And ever since that show we’ve gone simpler in terms of design – much more work on the inside than on the outside. At one point, the clothes were much more beautiful on the inside than on the outside… ”
GLENN WALDRON: “How do you think the Dior customer has changed in recent years?”
KRIS VAN ASSCHE: “The first thing to be said is that there are many more of them! There are a lot of new customers now. There’s still the young fashion kid but there is also a more traditional, luxury client who looks for well-tailored suiting. And I like that. The fact that we do young fashion and traditional tailoring – one inspires the other. I hope we are a perfect mixture between creativity and luxury.”
GLENN WALDRON: “Are you still inspired by the idea of youth? I think your attitude towards that changes as you get older… ”
KRIS VAN ASSCHE: “Well, I’ve never been so inspired by youth on its own. I’ve always liked this period where you move from childhood to adulthood, from a boy to a man. I’ve always liked this moment of change, of mutation into something else. At my own label, I’ve been playing with this idea for eight years now. Like, what would be the first suit a young guy is gonna wear as he enters the adult world? Even at Dior, it’s a permanent inspiration.”
GLENN WALDRON: “What’s inspiring you right now?”
KRIS VAN ASSCHE: “That’s a horrible question, but I feel like my answer is gonna be even more horrible. Even for, like, last summer’s show, everything was all so bright and light and white. It was kind of like creating a bubble. I work in a very privileged environment but, still, you feel what is going on and there’s so much trouble. And the more trouble I see in the news and read about, the more I feel we should propose something to dream about. The tougher it gets around us, the lighter I want the clothes to be. Does that make any sense?”
GLENN WALDRON: “Yes, I think so.”
KRIS VAN ASSCHE: “I remember back when at the time when I was an assistant, people wouldn’t mind being uncomfortable in clothes. They were basically willing to suffer to look good. And I don’t know whether it’s me getting older or whether it’s the environment changing, but I feel like we should now try to make people look good but also make them feel better. That sounds a little cheesy, doesn’t it?”
GLENN WALDRON: “Well, it’s a curious time to be working in luxury, I guess – does it feel as relevant right now?”
KRIS VAN ASSCHE: “Well there’s something extremely superficial about it – one could actually ask if there’s any sense in doing what we’re doing right now. But when so many things are going wrong, I think it’s even more essential to embellish the everyday, in whatever way we can. So it’s very essential and very superficial at the same time.”
GLENN WALDRON: “And what about work on your label – do you have a stronger personal connection to it? Maybe more creative freedom?”
KRIS VAN ASSCHE: “No, I don’t. People assume that I have much more creative freedom at my company and that they put limits on me at Dior. But it’s much more complicated and subtle than that. Of course, at my own label I have no creative boundaries but I do have economic boundaries – there are so many things I can’t do because I basically don’t have the money to do them. So in that sense, I have much freedom at Dior. I don’t have creative boundaries at Dior either – I just have to make a much bigger collection and be able to dress a lot of different types of men. But I actually enjoy that. And then I get a lot of financial freedom to do the most creative, fantastical things. So there is something to be said for both brands. They allow me to dream and to keep my feet on the ground. There is something very balancing about it.”
GLENN WALDRON: “And what of unrealised ambitions?”
KRIS VAN ASSCHE: “Well, it’s all out there, isn’t it? My ambition is to keep going. I mean, let’s just be honest about it – most people are basically just waiting for me to fall flat on my face. And I’m still here. That’s what I’m doing and that’s my ambition. To become better and better. There is no secret about it.”
