This season, the journey of the man of flowers continues, emerging from his Winter world of evening formality and the Opera House, to the bright sunshine and colour of Summer. The Dior Homme man led the way into the House’s sartorial secret garden, walking through a verdant bed of roses embedded in wooden parquet flooring at the Paris Tennis Club. The Fée des Neiges flowering white rosebushes throughout the venue mirrored the embroidered flora that wound up shirt sleeves, across the torso of suiting and down trouser legs. These whimsical blooms were contrasted with Kris Van Assche’s crisp and sharply cut suits, which also came with contrasting top stitch details, abstract embroidery and argyle patterns.
‘In this collection, the dialogue with Christian Dior continues in a more abstract way,’ says Van Assche. ‘There is an insistence on the ‘Frenchness’ of Dior, both the man and the house, and what that symbolises. At the same time, the collection could be seen as an exploration of sportswear, from its traditional roots to its contemporary incarnation.’ The colouration of military uniforms, the orange interior of the MA1 bomber jacket to khaki camouflage patterning and naval blues, was translated into a buttercup yellow ostrich skin coat, a crocodile coat in vivid tangerine and crocodile bomber in delicate apricot. Together with playfully mixing contemporary and tradition for Dior’s approach to sportswear with gentlemanly Argyll knits and hunting checks.
BY ADRIEN DIRAND
BY ADRIEN DIRAND
The work of the American ceramicist Kristin McKirdy, with its nod to the mid-century, and the creative peak of Mr Christian Dior, is adapted to jewellery. Here, the Dior lucky charm becomes a contemporary ceramic sculpture; an abstract talisman embodying the textures and colours of the collection, the bright, enamelled coatings becoming a code for key colours of the season.
BY MORGAN O’DONOVAN
BY ADRIEN DIRAND
BY MORGAN O’DONOVAN
BY ADRIEN DIRAND
BY MORGAN O’DONOVAN
BY MORGAN O’DONOVAN
‘For me it is always about finding codes, menswear is full of them, and this is something I love,’ say Kris Van Assche. ‘In this collection many of the codes are traditional, but it is the accumulation of those traditions that makes it both extreme and essentially about contemporary elegance.’
