Kris van Assche is looking to the future and he is ready to break all the rules. The designer firstly worked for Dior Homme in 2001 and for six years as an assistant to Hedi Slimane before he started his own label. Three years after that van Assche came back to Dior to take over the position of artistic director after Slimane’s departure-now creative director of Saint Laurent Paris.
"For the spring 2013 collection, I told my team that I wanted the starting point to be a navy-blue blazer," he says to an interview for British GQ last November, "though I have no idea where this came from. I wanted a basic piece and then to build a whole universe around it. It's almost perverse how many ideas you can pull from a navy-blue blazer. I wanted the collection to reflect real values, with no big statements, ideas or concepts - just real clothes."
To Kris van Assche, fashion is supposed to be optimistic. Feelings of assurance and enthusiasm are what drew him to Andrea Spotorno for this shoot, which features Dior’s SS13 collection. “It’s the first occasion I’ve got to work with Andrea, and it was the perfect choice because I wanted the shoot to be about a very dynamic young male. I wanted movement and bright colours. I wanted it to be very energetic – the photos have so much energy.”
Van Assche enjoys contrasts in his work and mimics this in his personality – just look at his signature fusion of tailoring with sportswear details. “We are into a new era now. This younger generation of designers is much more connected, and you see that in the design process. What we are living now has much less to do with this crazy extravaganza that you had five or ten years ago. Back then, there were nowhere near as many big, innovating menswear designers and now there are probably as many as in womenswear. You can’t fool clients any more. But then it was much easier to break rules ten years ago than it is today. Now all the rules have been broken. But I guess we should just forget about rules – that’s the future. Just get rid of every rule.”
