Dior kept it very cool and collected for SS16, with menswear creative director Kris Van Assche drawing on Dior’s age old ability to refresh and refine luxury. This was centred precisely around a very modest exercise of taking just the sports bomber and the blazer and pushing them to their creative sartorial limits.
Van Assche also deemed that summer at Dior means lightweight formal essentials, a dash of nostalgia in the form of preppy argyle and some boyishly romantic white rose prints that blossomed towards the end of the collection. The colour scheme that framed all of these intricate elements was a superlative yet fairly restrained selection of navy blue, atomic white and ripe orange, which in unison worked to create an image of sparkly summer skies like no other collection has this season.
The camouflage traces were an interesting addition and aren’t a first in Paris so far this season. Yet when Dior does it, it works. Perhaps it’s the sense of a conceptual culture clash, but seeing such a hardy symbol so nearby walls of white roses on the catwalk makes for a touchingly beautiful gesture. Dior has certainly got its menswear lucky charm in Van Assche, and the creative director’s eye for art meets stand-out luxury pieces is showing no signs of letting up.
by Liam Feltham
Images courtesy of Style.com