Kris Van Assche working on a look at the Dior Homme Summer 15 fittings. Photography Gaetan Bernard

Trust Kris Van Assche to have the guts to hit the refresh button. The hairier route will often get you farthest, and that’s exactly the one the designer has taken for Dior Homme Summer 15.

Winter saw the debut of a stronger, fiercer Dior Homme man and according to Van Assche it doesn’t stop here, the concept of personal recharge burning a heavy shadow this season. The designer’s individual dialogue with Christian Dior also continues, this time via an imaginary written conversation with the man himself…

Dior Homme Summer 15

“I liked the idea of how you renew and recharge yourself – something I know from personal experience,” says Van Assche. “There is this sense in the collection, of travel from the city to the sea. At the same time, there is also an idea of Christian Dior and his artistic milieu, of how he would renew himself through them. It is sort of an imaginary meeting in the present day of Dior and today’s milieu, the bourgeois and the bohemian together in the South of France.

In this collection the dialogue with Christian Dior continues from Winter’s his personal signature is literally present on some of the clothing. The signature became the thing that took the place of the Lily of the Valley of last season; both seemed so personal and human in a sense. It was that idea of individuality, humanity and tradition transformed for today that I wanted to continue with from the Winter season.

I never like to do something that is too literally referenced. So even though the dialogue with Mr Dior continues in this collection, it is essentially an imaginary dialogue aesthetically from my position of now, from today. For this collection I was very inspired by a letter that Christian Dior wrote that I found in the archive – this is when you feel somebody talking to you from the past in the present quite literally; it was about how vital it is to maintain traditions. I too feel very strongly about this. The text elements in the collection are taken from this letter.”

Dior Homme Summer 15 shows in Paris this afternoon, Saturday 28th June. Stay tuned to HERO for full fashion week coverage from London, Florence, Milan and Paris