Punk met Mod met Skinhead at Dior Homme’s youthful and cool retro mash-up for Summer 2017, with a playground setting that made fun of fashion’s tendency to take itself too seriously.
With a sporty range of technical fabrics and a raft of new silhouettes not seen at Dior Homme before, the maison’s menswear department has a collection aimed at boosting its appeal among young Asian consumers. There were no suits as such here, the traditional two piece was abandoned in favour of a playful playground echo.
“This season there is a sense of collective consciousness to the collection – a remix of shared boyhood memories,” said Dior Homme designer Kris van Assche. “I am interested in a synthesis of generations and filtering subcultures through my own lens to tell a new story.” van Assche piled in a mass of street subculture references to the collection (this is where the punk/mod/skinhead part surfaced) that will be echoed in the brand’s new campaign, shot by Willy Vanderperre, and spotlighting enfant terrible filmmaker Larry Clark, young French actor Rod Paradot and model Dylan Roques along with rapper A$AP Rocky.
Dior also produced its own version of the Doctor Marten bovver boot that I spent much of my teenage years dodging, and here the collection did sail close to a shape and form too often seen at football matches and right wing rallies. But with colour and exquisite construction van Assche defused these memes and made the clothes seem more like dress up than a uniform of insurrection. It will play very well in the nightclubs of Shanghai and Guangzhou.
By Daniel Jeffreys
