Kris Van Assche Has Designed Vases and Dishes for Serax

Kris Van Assche is out to make flower arranging extra trendy, extra poetic — and somewhat disruptive.

His new assortment for Belgian homewares specialist Serax contains glass poppies and orchids that can by no means wilt; lengthy silver-plated glass tubes to water and exalt a single stem, and vases in such uncommon supplies as concrete, marble and silver-plated porcelain.

Simply launched on serax.com, The Josephine Assortment proves that the sudden parts that always sparked Van Assche’s menswear designs for Berluti and Dior — tribal tattoo motifs one season, punk badges the subsequent — may apply to vessels.

To make sure, the Belgian designer introduced virtually a lifetime of flower-arranging appreciation to the mission, named after his late grandmother and generally immediately impressed by her vases and sweet dishes.

“She had not a lot cash, however she positively had a excessive style degree and she or he was positively a fan of maintaining appearances,” Van Assche mentioned. “She would by no means go away the home with out a hat, and she or he would at all times set a pleasant desk, even for a fast lunch. For her, each had been a type of politeness.”

In an interview, the designer cited a robust appreciation for “old-world magnificence” — and for the provocative flower photographs of American artist Robert Mapplethorpe, who typically depicted stems jutting horizontally from a vessel and sagging sensually.

However the designer additionally flexed his style coaching at Antwerp’s Royal Academy of Artwork, which demanded style college students dissect historic clothes after which discover methods to interpret them in unique and modern methods.

Therefore Van Assche insisted on an oblong base for all his vessels, which not solely provides stability however telegraphs a extra trendy and minimalist sensibility. He talked about that his menswear designs usually begin with the shoulder line and the sneakers, which “have a giant affect on the attract of the silhouette.”

The lengthy glass tubes, which protrude diagonally from an empty vase, can harbor the last-surviving stem from a bouquet — or be employed in busier preparations.

In the meantime, glass flowers additionally add a disquieting factor — a man-made invader amongst stay specimens.

The gathering ranges from humble beer-bottle shapes — the makeshift vase of scholars, and Van Assche — to grander botanical and rotund vessels.

Costs begin at 49 euros for a small bud vase and run as much as 560 euros for a tall black marble cylinder, although most vases fall within the neighborhood of 200 euros. Glass poppies and orchids go from 42 euros to 69 euros, whereas sweet dishes go from 95 euros to 260 euros.

Van Assche was conversant in Serax as a consumer of its tableware by Ann Demeulemeester, one among dozens of designers who create china, glasses, lighting, furnishings and residential equipment for the agency, based in Belgium in 1986 by brothers Serge and Axel Van Den Bossche.

Glad to be taking a break from style, however lacking interactions with craftspeople, he reached out to Serax immediately, secured a gathering with the chief govt officer and shortly launched into a yearlong course of to convey The Josephine Assortment to life.

His preliminary thought was to create synthetic flowers in the identical materials because the vase, whether or not it was glass, concrete or marble. (Ultimately, solely glass ones had been technically doable.)

“I at all times really feel like vases are both hidden by a wonderful bouquet of flowers after they’re full or after they’re empty, you place them in a closet. You by no means take a look at the vase as an object by itself,” he mentioned within the interview. “I fairly appreciated the problem of constructing a vase that might be one way or the other self-sufficient, that might work with flowers or with out.

“I additionally actually like that concept of a number of features for one vase. So all of those vases are delivered with one tube inside, so you’ll be able to at all times save the one flower that survived after per week.”

Van Assche mentioned he owns a few dozen vases, however “for some bizarre purpose, I don’t actually have the kind of vases that I like and that I want.”

Followers of Van Assche on Instagram are conversant in his forearm tattoos — orchids on his left arm, tulips on the suitable — and his mirror selfies cradling bunches of flowers within the lobby of his house constructing. He mentioned he typically buys them on the market as a reward for the chore of meals buying, or at his favourite Paris florist, Louis-Géraud Castor, who shares his penchant for “creating stress within the bouquet. There’s at all times a distinction or one thing off stability.”

For his Serax picture shoot, Van Assche collaborated with celebrated Antwerp-based floral artist Mark Colle, who famously created partitions of blooms for Raf Simons’ Dior debut in 2012.

The addition of glass tubes definitely provides one other dimension to each sparse and dense preparations. “It virtually seems to be like a ‘RoboCop’ form of bouquet,” Van Assche remarked, referring to Paul Verhoeven’s 1987 American science fiction movie.

In the meantime, his revival of the sweet dish is one other tribute to his grandmother, who stocked hers with chocolate and finally willed them to her grandson.

“It’s in all probability probably the most old style merchandise I’ve ever designed, and it was a approach of emphasizing this concept of old-world magnificence,” he mentioned. “I appreciated the way it’s virtually not possible to make that object trendy, to provide that an replace. And but I really feel like by making them in concrete, or silver-plated china, we truly obtained away with it.”