Kris Van Assche is also turning his hand to interior design The designer has created a new collection with Serax, but says he is still interested in fashion
Kris Van Assche joins the long list of former designers who, after putting down needle and thread, have turned to something else. After expressing his creativity for years—first as an assistant to Hedi Slimane at Yves Saint Laurent and Christian Dior, then for the launch of his brand KRISVANASSCHE, later as artistic director of Dior Homme and finally of Berluti—the Belgian designer has changed fields. Last spring he unveiled his first collaboration with Serax, a family-run contemporary homeware company with which he created a collection of glass vases and bonbonnières with organic shapes and palettes, but now - right around Christmas - the partnership between the two compatriots becomes more serious with a second release.
The second collection by Kris Van Assche for Serax
This December, Van Assche explored the world of candles, creating two fragrances that recall his childhood: the first candle evokes the scent of holidays he spent as a child in Spain, while the second revisits the idea behind the bonbonnière-shaped candle holder through sweet and floral notes.
Already last June, vases shaped like hand-blown glass beer bottles told the story of the romantic interpretation the designer wants to give to his interior design, characterized by a poetic pairing of the everyday nature of forms and the refinement of materials. «Such contrasts have always fuelled my work; they are freeing, never limiting», the designer commented in a post on Instagram.
The collections launched together with Serax are inspired by and named after Josephine, the name of Van Assche’s grandmother, underscoring the sense of intimacy the designer wanted to preserve in this collaboration. In an interview with MF Fashion, Van Assche explained how this need to reconnect with craftsmanship arose precisely when he stepped away from the fashion world in 2021.
In the interview, the designer said he had rediscovered his deep passion for «old world beauty», and that he drew inspiration from the work of Robert Mapplethorpe for the creation of the Serax collection, developed together with floral artist Mark Colle. Asked about the future, Van Assche said he does not rule out working exclusively in either fashion or interiors—quite the opposite. «I would love to find a brand that knows how to appreciate that old world beauty I was talking about earlier», he added.
That time when Kris Van Assche designed a chair collection
This is not the first time Kris Van Assche has ventured into interior design: during Design Miami 2019, the creative director - who at the time was still working in Berluti’s ateliers - collaborated with the owner of Laffanour Galerie Downtown, François Laffanour, on the reinterpretation of 17 magnificent authentic works by Pierre Jeanneret produced by the Swiss designer in the 1950s. What left a particularly strong impression in this project were the colors of the collection, which included eighteen different shades for seventeen pieces, including the red Sukhna cinema chair, the orange Nespola daybed, and the garden-green judge’s armchair named Pinjore.
