Mood board: An electric blue suit, eased in proportion but still sharp, opened the show at the Opera Garnier. The staircase was strewn with a kaleidoscope of flowers in acid bright colours. Artistic director Kris Van Assche’s A/W 2020 collection surveyed notions of heritage both real and yet to be realised. Speaking about the collection, Van Assche said he was intrigued by what the maison’s century-old archives, which are largely focused on the craft of shoemaking and leather work, would hold if they contained tailoring and ready-to-wear. His musing put candid twists on classic suiting with pops of neon. A brightly hued roll-neck replaced a shirt-and-tie.
Team work: For December’s Design Miami, Van Assche joined forces with François Laffanour (founder of Paris’s Laffanour Galerie Downtown) to present a collection of original Pierre Jeanneret furniture pieces. Restored by Laffanour, they were upholstered with Berluti’s signature Venezia leather. The patina of a green blouson and lean leather suiting extended the concept one step further, giving the body a poetically perverse touch.
Finishing touches: Prince of Wales check, houndstooth and herringbone were all dialled up: houndstooth embroidered onto knitwear; the same tessellation blown up and refracted over a hand-splashed ponyskin jacket. Houndstooth blended with Prince of Wales check on a double-face wool coat. Shearling was shaved with chevrons. New for the season was a shoe care kit made in collaboration with Globe-Trotter. Van Assche examined the emblematic Scritto motif in a signature canvas which took its lines to form a logo that featured on canvas bags: ‘My idea was to design a printed canvas as if it had always existed in the archives,’ he said of the pattern. A bridge between past and potential.
