Berluti SS19

It was to be expected, but Kris Van Assche has made a modern man of Berluti’s ageless gentleman. Since the Belgian designer began his reboot of the brand last season, the dependable – if a little brutish – smart silhouettes have eased, whittled down to a proportion which seems more secure with itself, and so too, the spirit of the men they were designed to dress. It seems the fear to err outside the codes of classic design has been overridden by a brave, impulsive appetite for disruption, evidenced through the line of neatly cut double breasted jackets, fashioned in flat, acid pink hues and sometimes decked with a mottled aerosol print. The rest of the palette, though far from complementary, puddled off-shades like golden ochre and forest green, the multiple textures that made up each look snatched tight by a disciplined scheme; satin shirts – sans tie – buttoned to the neck beneath a peaked lapel suit jacket, only a touch darker, complete with a pair of skinny leather trousers. Trouser hems traipsed at the ankles, spliced with zipped cuffs, closing the pencil-thin cuts with a petal-like grace. None of this is to say that classicism is off the cards; for every square-tipped shoe or biker pant, there was a piece you could bank on wringing out a lifetime’s worth of wear. Just see the single-breasted suits crafted of the same thick, burnished brown leather that sculpts the brand’s infamous footwear, reptillian bombers and backpacks, or the heavy black skins that bought a sense of authority to customarily casual drawstring hoodies and toggled duffles. Short of wandering the realm of novelty, means of making a statement through menswear remain remarkably restricted; Berluti under Van Assche keeps the lines of communication crystal clear.