Kris Van Assche first reached out to Brian Rochefort to collaborate on Berluti Spring Summer 2021 straight after the last show in January. The results are creatively serendipitous because – even via a grainy Zoom – the primevally violent patterns of Rochefort’s roiling, volcanically-inspired ceramics appear highly appropriate for the churning uncertainty of now.
Over that Zoom Van Assche filled us in on a collection that is to be launched via an online video of himself in conversation with his LA-based collaborator on the Paris schedule. The collection hasn’t been shot yet – in fact only a small proportion of it has even been delivered due to production delays – but what was on the rail looked strong.
Van Assche said: “After two years here, I felt ready and comfortable to invite a third person to the table. Until now I have been concentrating on finding and refining the balance between my personal style in the DNA of the brand. And so after the last show in January, I immediately contacted Brian to do what I thought would be my next runway show. And then shit happened.”
He added: “I admire Brian’s work a lot. I have collected ceramics for years, starting out with traditional French ceramics – pure and perfect and smooth and traditional – but little by little I learned about more contemporary forms and artists doing freer stuff. And Brian is really the most unconventional ceramic I’ve encountered… He is the bad boy of ceramics!”
Since arriving at Berluti, Van Assche has dived into what is arguably its USP, the lustrous and deep patina achieved by house artisans on its leather goods and shoes. As Van Asche held up pieces of silk shirting printed to exactly replicate the colorfully robust undulations of Rochefort’s unctuous ice-creamy eruptions, the adjacency of the two practices was apparent. So too in a beautiful sweater in a patchwork riot of different color and yarn, and a shoe more restrainedly applied with a patina patterned to replicate a Rochefort bubbling.
Van Assche added that from January he plans smaller collections with elements more frequently dropped in-store (every three weeks) to increase the tide of newness for the brand. Meanwhile he is developing a core collection of Berluti classics that will transcend the seasons, acting as stable sea-bed for the back and forth atop it. This seems like an admirable strategy for a subtle resculpturing.
The designer also observed of this extraordinary season: “I didn’t want to do a filmed fashion show digitally. I mean, I love fashion shows, but I love them for the humanity, the realness, the emotion, the venue, the music…. And the fact that you see the clothes being worn by boys and girls. I don’t think you can translate that emotion into video. But what you can’t do at a real fashion show is transmit the backstory, the information, where things come from. People say ‘oh that was a colorful collection with nice prints’. So for the first time I suppose I can give that information first and the results after… although usually I don’t like to show a work in progress.
I kind of always feel like people don’t need to know what’s going on in the kitchen. But shooting the conversation was nice and the way Brian works and the way I work – we connected very well.”