ACROSS THE AGES
With one foot in tradition and one foot in the future, Kris Van Assche has boldly taken Berluti into the 21st century.
By HASSAN AL-SALEH
Photography VALENTIN B. GIACOBETTI
Belgian designer Kris Van Assche, known for his minimalistic aesthetic and luxury urban designs, is a veteran in the fashion industry. A graduate from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp, he interned at Yves Saint Laurent where he worked for Hedi Slimane, who he then followed to Dior, before starting his namesake label. As fate would have it, he returned to Dior in 2007 to replace his mentor Slimane at the helm.
After an 11 year tenure at Dior, marked by a balance of heritage and innovation, he was appointed Artistic Director of Berluti, which he succeeded from Haider Ackermann, and before him Alessandro Sartori. Originally founded as a luxury shoe maker in 1895, Van Assche has imbued the heritage brand with a newfound street-cool edge that only a clear-cut contemporary designer can bring, proving that craftsmanship does not apply only to the traditional or the classic.
During his three-year tenure, Van Assche embraced the future with a playful take on the past. He crafted new luxury at Berluti that crossed generations by taking sartorial creations into unexplored territory.
What instinctively attracted you to Berluti?
Luxury is on another level at Berluti. There is a huge sense of craft and tradition, which I aimed to keep but also make more modern and creative. Craft, luxury and creativity can go hand-in-hand, and that has definitely been my leitmotif.
Berluti is of course about leather and patina, and patina means color. This has had a major influence on my work as a designer and never before were my collections this colorful.
Did you discover anything surprising about the brand DNA?
Three years ago, at my arrival at Berluti, patina was used only for shoes and leather goods. I immediately challenged the teams to find ways we could adapt that craft to ready to wear. Not an easy task - a lot of technical issues needed to be solved - but we managed to do it. If the leathers were a little stiff at first, we are now perfectly capable of making soft, fluid patina leathers suitable even for shirts!
It must be incredibly daunting but equally exciting to be working with a maison whose archives are literally pairs of shoes. Talk to us about your creative process.
When I first asked to visit Berluti’s archives - because that’s what we always did at Dior - my assistant’s response was simply to put a shoe on my desk. I quickly saw the liberating aspect of it, the potential it offered us to grow and create something new.
Historically, Berluti attracted artists from all over the world who would come to Paris and have their shoes made to measure. They were looking for quality, of course, but also for a pair of shoes that stood out. This has been my leitmotif while designing the collections: the right balance within high-end creativity.
How have you transformed the sartorial history of Berluti into a more relevant context?
Berluti is foremost about shoes, leather and patina. So, it is normal for my silhouette to always start with an idea for the shoes. Shoes define the attitude of a silhouette.
After feeling comfortable about the silhouette and finding the right tone for my collections, I introduced a collaboration with LA-based artist Brian Rochefort for Summer 2021 and with contemporary artist Lev Khesin for Winter 2021-2022. His bold use of color offered the new kind of challenges I am always looking for to reinforce the DNA of Berluti.
Collaborations help to challenge the brand’s DNA, to question it and make it stronger. Tradition and craft are great but in order to keep them relevant, I like to kind of ‘clash’ them with contemporary art.
In what ways have you balanced the heritage of the brand with your own personal aesthetic as a designer?
The way I would describe my work is that I have one foot in tradition and one foot in the future. It’s a balance I’ve been fine-tuning and refining since I first got here.
Your use of bold and vibrant colors has been an unexpected yet welcomed addition to your vernacular. Where does that stem from? Anyone who knows me knows that color is quite a new thing for me. It comes from Berluti’s DNA, from the patina.
When you go to the manifattura, you meet these colorists who put the patina onto the shoes, layer after layer. They have an incredible range of shades, and two pairs of shoes are never really identical.
The Berluti man is very different today than he was in the past. Who is he in your perspective?
Whatever his age, he has a youthful spirit, a sense of energy, power and freedom.
Today, the more traditional client and the more adventurous one go hand-in-hand, sometimes even blend. I used to think it was a generation thing, a little like a father and his son. But the truth is, you never really know who will be buying the more creative or the more traditional pieces.
Craftsmanship is a defining quality of Berluti. How have you translated this across your designs and collections?
The use of patina on garments has been key since my arrival at the brand. Our patinated leather suits look like they could come straight from the archives, yet they employ an altogether new technique because the patina as we knew it was not suitable for use on clothes. It took us eight months to develop that specific craftsmanship, because the standards for leather jackets here are beyond anything I’ve seen before.
I have an enormous respect for tradition and craft, but I am also convinced it is my role to reinvent it, to push it into new research, new directions, in order to keep it relevant and interesting; to prepare it for the future. A craft that doesn’t ever evolve will end up disappearing! That is why I have been bringing these creative collaborations. A contemporary artist working color in a similar spirit to the craftsmen at Berluti will give a fresh eye on things and open new doors.
How did the partnership with François Laffanour to revive a collection of Pierre Jeanneret furniture pieces come about? Is this what inspired the creation of a Home and Office Objects collection as a new area of expression?
François Laffanour and I have a long history together. I met him thanks to my passion for 20th century design. I actually thought of this collaboration when I first heard of the offer to join Berluti. The link between the use of color on these design pieces that I love from the ‘50s and Berluti’s patina is easy to see. It made for a strong creative starting point in my head and a bridge to this new heritage that I was not acquainted with.
The Home and Office Objects are an evolution of this first project and in keeping with Berluti’s tradition. The project started out of my desire to collaborate with other makers with a decades-long tradition of craftsmanship.
Women borrowing pieces from a man’s wardrobe has been a narrative you first introduced during your debut show and continues until today. Where did that idea come from?
It’s really a response to a specific market demand. Smaller men’s sizes are often bought by women at Berluti. They’re even the first to sell out. Which makes sense: a perfectly cut suit, perhaps worn with a pair of sneakers, is attractive regardless of gender.
How has the latest introduction of The Essentials collection help you further formulate your vision of Berluti?
The Essentials is a timeless, permanent collection, an edit of modern classics and elevated basics comprising all the must-have pieces that should be in every man’s wardrobe. The idea is for those understated pieces to complement the more creative pieces of the collection.
We have lived through unprecedented times over the last year. Has it changed your views on your role as a designer?
In a way, it has been a total reset for me. For the past 20 years, I’ve had a fashion show every six months! But what I’ve come to realize is that the human side of things, the craft way, the artisanal way, the limited-edition rarity of what we do at Berluti, as a contrast to the relentless pre-pandemic rhythm of the fashion industry, is going to become even more important. In a world where everything is virtual, there is something very special about going back to the magic of the senses, the touch of leather, the look of an exquisite detail.
In what ways do you think you contributed to the legacy of such a venerable maison?
All I aimed for is for luxury to be modern, and for craft to have a future.
