Vogue – 22 janvier 2018<\/p>\n
by SARAH MOWER
\nHow weird is it to think that the president of France, Emmanuel Macron, aged 40, was born only five years before \u201cForever Young\u201d by Alphaville\u2014the 1984 New Wave\/synth hit Kris Van Assche chose to close his Christian Dior Homme show today? Van Assche, a Belgian in Paris, is just one year older than the man who runs France. That\u2019s pause for thought, the principal one (since we\u2019re dealing with fashion) being along the lines of a) the enduring importance of the two-piece suit to masculine power in the civic, corporate, and global private wealth spheres, and b) the synonymity of Christian Dior as a brand with French national identity. In other words, there\u2019s no way Van Assche cannot deal face-on with the suits.
\nHe did it, perhaps self-knowingly, by reflecting on the boy inside his middle-aged peers\u2014the ex-raver generation which is seizing positions of power in the 21st century. The jacket Van Assche was wearing backstage had a black label tacked to the top of one sleeve cuff, reading \u201cChristian Dior Atelier,\u201d a sartorial heritage signal indicating handmade tailoring values (as well as a bit of an inside-out Martin Margiela-ism). So far, so manly.
\nBut bless him, in this age of roiling gender politics, Van Assche\u2019s first instinct had been to bring in an expert woman from the Christian Dior women\u2019s atelier to help him work on how to adapt the manual know-how of Dior\u2019s late-\u201940s and early-\u201950s women\u2019s tailoring, and turn it into \u201csharp\u201d suits for men. \u201cI wanted to make it very body-conscious. With streetwear, more or less everything has become blurred, loose,\u201d he said.
\nBut what about keeping the boy-thoughts alive? Van Assche returned to his own teen memories, of \u201cthe first tattoo you got when you were 15,\u201d and how it was clubbing in the \u201990s, layering short-sleeved T-shirts over long-sleeves. And the baggy but high-waist jeans; and the other kids, who stuck to polo shirts and synthetic anoraks with terrible prints. In fact, Van Assche was never a clubber, but he knew all about it, from his bedroom. Yet all that stuff is now idolized by a second generation as classic vintage style.
\nMaybe Emmanuel Macron is just the same; occupied with studying as he was, yet still hyperaware that there\u2019s a young generation coming up who might buy into new politics, new style. On the Christian Dior runway, both generations were represented\u2014the original cool \u201990s guys who are now wearing the suits and carrying the briefcases, and generation Z, who everyone and his strategist now wants to capture.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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