More than 20 years since his debut film Kids, Larry Clark turns his singular lens on Dior Homme.
By Jon Roth
Photography Larry Clark
There they go, strutting ahead, long and lanky, cocky in the way that only teenage boys can be. Behind them, the Art Deco bas-relief of the Palais de Tokyo. Before them, skateboarders speed and spin, held aloft less by physics than sheer exuberance. The boys walk on, talking with their heads down, laughing, looking up here and there to smirk, to wink. They loaf together on a stone ledge, legs dangling. It looks like they’ll live forever young.
No one captures surly, rambunctious youth like Larry Clark.
The auteur has just created a short film in collaboration with Dior Homme, a skate-centric montage of sudden jump cuts, shaky close-ups and superimposed imagery meant to highlight the release of seven new sneakers. And sure, we see the shoes, but the focus is much broader than that. Mostly, we see four models, and the skaters surrounding them, inhabiting the space outside the National Museum of Modern Art in Paris.
It’s a fitting subject and setting for Dior, and particularly for Dior Homme’s Artistic Director Kris Van Assche, who has worked diligently to reconcile the fashion house’s historic roots with the forward-thinking vitality of youth culture.
"Larry Clark is intimately linked to the youth culture of my generation, and for this reason he is one of the indelible references in my inspiration. It has been an honor and a pleasure to be able work on this project with him." – Kris Van Assche