Why a Former Dior Designer Got Into Pottery
Four years at Saint Laurent as Hedi Slimane’s right-hand man. 11 years of softening Dior Homme’s tailoring. A decade of his independent label’s quietly subversive and much-lauded menswear. Three years of joyful Berluti suiting. And then… nothing.
No one expected Kris Van Assche’s 2021 departure from Berluti would lead to an extended departure from the industry as a whole. This is an era-defining fashion designer whose eye for sensuality and refined tailoring played a pivotal role in what fellas wore worldwide for the first two decades of the 21st century. Van Assche could’ve landed anywhere. But he was seeking a new kind of challenge.
These days, you're more likely to see Van Assche fussing around a kiln than a mannequin. Last year, the menswear designer launched Joséphine, a limited series of high-end ceramic vases in honor of his grandmother produced with luxury kitchen- and homeware brand Serax. Rosamar, Van Assche’s follow-up collection, plays classic curvaceous vases against squared-off bases. Despite looking like brutalist concrete, these forms are once again ceramic, subtly toying with conventions, like Van Assche’s clothes.
Van Assche’s new era goes beyond vases. He’s also started creating art pieces, presenting fluid bronze sculptures (some of which are, admittedly, also vases) at François Laffanour Downtown Gallery in Paris, the indefinable art project Basic.Space, and Salone del Mobile in Milan. He’s even dipping his toes back into fashion, creating sculptural puffer coats with sportswear label Anta last year as well as releasing a line of casual Fred Perry summer suiting and suave pinstriped sportswear in February.
In the midst of all this new output, I spoke with the fashion designer turned vase-maker about passions both new and old.
What drew you to working with Serax after time away from fashion?
After completing my book [Kris Van Assche – 55 Collections], I felt a certain relief in stepping away from the rollercoaster I had been on for nearly twenty years. I questioned my personal style and had to define the links between my work for my own brand, Dior, and Berluti. Those brands can feel quite different at first, and I needed to connect the dots. Making a book on almost 20 years of my work was like a psychoanalysis on speed; not always easy, but healthy. I understood I was always the same designer, simply working with different tools.
I decided on a more transversal approach and wanted to shift my focus to different types of projects that might be smaller in scale, but extremely precise. I have always felt a strong connection between fashion and design; in the end it is all about making everyday life more beautiful. For as long as I can remember, I have been buying flowers, so vases came as a natural evolution to my design work.
Since leaving Berluti, you’ve also created bronze vessels in collaboration with the François Laffanour Downtown Gallery in Paris. Why the pivot?
After Berluti, I was happy to feel challenged, to learn something completely new and work with a different type of craft. The collaborative element is really important to me and working with the experts at the foundry is a privilege and humbling experience. I am always attracted to people who know how to do something I don’t.
The pace is of course slower, and the whole process took about two years to develop. I love the fact that bronze has such an “old-fashioned” connotation to it; all the more fun to work it into something contemporary.
Both Serax collections center around your fondness for “old world beauty.” How do you define that?
I stand for Old World Beauty – but in a contemporary way. In a violent world, beauty is a form of rebellion, resistance. Fashion, design, and flowers even, become an intentional act. My fashion was never about extravaganza, nor is my design. My aim is to bring meaning to the ordinary. It is not about saying things were better before, nor about being pro or anti tradition: What I care about is defining the right measure for now.
For the Josephine vases, I reference the aesthetic of the past and make that into something new. By using unexpected materials, or by giving a perfectly square base to all of the designs, recognizable shapes and forms can be seen through fresh eyes. Besides the aesthetic obsession, there is also something purely practical and pragmatic to my vases: I designed this silver glass tube in which a single flower can be placed inside the vase. I like how a single flower can occupy the whole space.
As with fashion, all starts with form and materials. And as with my work as a fashion designer, I like the tension created by the mixing of different references, of opposites.
There are the “bourgeois” silver-plated porcelain and marble on one side, and the brutalist element of concrete on the other. Georges-Eugène Haussmann versus Le Corbusier. There is the ornate element of the bonbonniere, but also a reworked beer-bottle. Feminine versus masculine. The second collection for Serax, Rosamar, uses the same idea of contrast: The traditional ceramic looks like concrete, the dripping of the glaze is worked in a precise block of color.
What are your fondest memories of Rosamar, the Spanish village where you spent summers growing up?
We went there at least 15 times in a row. I would always find the same group of friends there, and the thought of Rosamar brings back only good memories of youth, and the freedom that comes with it. At the end of the holidays my mom would always bring home a typical southern ceramic pot, and with the second collection for Serax, I decided to reinterpret this classic archetype and fond memory.
There is no dripping glaze or any decorative reference, and all pieces have an atypical square base. This breaks with the traditional throwing process and together with the sharp glazing of the color blocks on the concrete color of the clay, makes for “old world beauty” within a contemporary context. At the end of the day, I am working with artisans and convincing them to break their own rules, in order to get somewhere new. It is not so different from working with tailors in a couture atelier.
Is this approach reflected in the design of your spaces?
My space in Paris is also about a sense of contrast: The Haussmann architecture stands in opposition to mid-century French furniture and contemporary artists’ work. Contrast offers perspective, and a better view of each individual element.
You recently oversaw a Fred Perry collaboration. Would you consider a proper return to fashion?
Fred Perry was a lot of fun to do and also challenging. It was refreshing to work on a smaller collection than I am used to, to edit down the message to 13 pieces. Everything needed to be spot on. This collection feels like the closest I’ve been to my own brand for a while, yet it is obviously also very much Fred Perry.
These design projects don’t mean I am done with fashion. If the right proposal comes along, I will be sure to pick up the phone! But I do enjoy the diversity of this new phase in my creative life.
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