lewis chong

When Lucas Ossendrijver was drafted in as style director of Lanvin menswear there was no archive of past collections, no atelier, no source materials to consult. What he did find was the made-to-measure department, a sort of altar to craftsmanship, where premier tailors have laboured over shirts and suits, cravats and bow ties for private clients since 1926. It is here where you would find the Dutch designer in his early days—watching, assessing, planning.

For Ossendrijver the lack of a prior blueprint didn’t hinder. It gave him even more authority to tread his own path, to establish the masculine codes for a fashion house that will be historically defined by them, and him. To do this he turned to radical experimentation, challenging the potential of silhouette, textiles and technique. Research is so crucial that Ossendrijver refers to his workspace as a ‘creative laboratory’. No sketches or draping bolts of toile onto a mannequin. It’s exploration and critical analysis. He will spend weeks with his team of five young assistants determining the mood of a new collection and imagining its fabrics and gestures before any preliminary samples are manufactured. His design practice is about partnership, and it demonstrates his capacity to welcome the unknown.

‘Lanvin isn’t a collection, it’s a wardrobe for men,’ is Ossendrijver’s much-quoted maxim. His method offers freedom and choice in menswear, an essential framework of important, personal pieces for all sorts of men. It’s fair to say that the inclusion Ossendrijver has fostered is worlds away from his previous experience at Dior Homme under the direction of Hedi Slimane, whose devotion to the idealised rake-thin rock star silhouette had the ability to exclude. Though it did encourage Karl Lagerfeld to drop six stone so he could shimmy into Hedi’s extra-skinny denim.

Now a decade into his tenure at France’s oldest couture house and Lucas Ossendrijver has his language fully formed. The milestone not only marks 10 years of him at the helm, but 10 years of Lanvin as we know it—crumbled up, lived in, let-loose elegance. Another monumental change is the ousting of Alber Elbaz. Lanvin's former artistic director shared a brotherly, even fatherly, relationship with Ossendrijver, and when the sudden dismissal was announced in October many wondered how it would affect him and the menswear.

The Autumn/Winter 2016 collection is the first that Elbaz has not cast his eye over. He gave Ossendrijver complete independence but was always on hand to offer guidance, to reassure. It’s a big one too as it celebrates the anniversary; a retrospective of sorts. Not officially, Ossendrijver would never admit to such an easy read. Cementing meaning might affect ambiguity. But how could the collection not reference the past in some way as it's a steady evolution of the male wardrobe, and given the circumstances.

Instead Ossendrijver spoke of looking onward—putting the garment under a microscope, about the performance of detail and to honour the hand behind the honed. To do this he pushed construction into the spotlight, showcasing what might ordinarily go unnoticed. Bias bound seams, usually hidden inside a garment's lining, become an important design detail on a felt wool parka crafted inside-out. Its generous cut leaves room underneath for mismatched layers in opposing textures, colours and fabrics—a signature of Lanvin’s. The bowling shirt is a crucial contrast this season, reworked here in a technical voile fabric with striped jersey inserts and in washed silk printed allover with boot treads. A shout-out to the worker.

Conflict isn’t only felt in the layering; a rebellious personality is seen throughout the collection. To this end Ossendrijver roughed up perfection and clashed sub-cultures. A fine suit jacket is cropped to the waist, its neckline left unfinished after the collar is ripped off leaving the lapel behind. Wide-leg virgin wool trousers explore new volumes through pleats and gathers. The boxy ease of a Harrington-meets-varisty jacket in light grey cuts through their rippling weight. For more textural depth a significant runway sweater, knit from wool in a structural military stitch, is unfinished with a raw edged neck, slightly ragged as if sawn off.

Subversion is demonstrated in the house’s footwear collection too. Dress shoes become juxtapositions. Take the classic Derby, at Lanvin the leather uppers of this less formal shoe are hand-stitched to serrated shark soles or fused with the angular platforms of a Creeper. On another pair the laces are replaced with elasticated bands—athleticism and performance cross-bred with the formal. The signature running sneaker also celebrates the anniversary this season, reissued anew in explorative compositions including a netting and mesh pair vividly spray-dyed with reptilian stripes. The graffitied marks hint at the hand.

Meanwhile in Paris, at Lucas Ossendrijver’s modest office in the 8th Arrondissement, an antique desk is flanked by stacks of books on art and photography; the hard-backed editions spill onto floating shelves and all-white surfaces. It’s the unofficial library of the ‘creative laboratory’ where a collection begins to find its feet, and where Ossendrijver spends many a lunchtime leafing through his titles with an egg mayo butty (probably not that last bit). He has favourites too. A heady collection of Kodachrome snapshots taken by the late fashion photographer David Armstrong is one. Night and Day documents Armstrong’s prolific cast of friends and contemporaries in the clubbing heyday of late 1970s/early ‘80s New York; artist Jean-Michel Basquiat and poet Rene Ricard included. Of equal importance are two titles, Jens F and Neighbours/Nachbarn, by Collier Schorr. In these works the fine art photographer creates assemblages of youth, capturing the gestures of identity—both real and fictionalised—that betray her fresh-faced sitters.

These three volumes reveal most about the Lanvin man; they’re his coming of age moments. Ossendrijver’s approach to design might be about evolution but it’s also an evaluation: of the pitted roads between adulthood and adolescence, of the oppositions in domesticity and fantasy, and of the potency of the individual. When many other fashion collections are approximations of personality, whitewashing the irregularities of the wearer, Ossendrijver taps their divine source. The Dutch designer has revealed an extraordinary capacity to reflect nuance and shape change. A quality that has given the Lanvin man time to grow into himself. Because, let’s face it, aren’t we all still figuring it out as we go?