MILAN – Jan-Jan Van Essche’s fashion must be examined up close to grasp where the designer’s creativity is channeled from.

By his own admission, at first sight lots of his soft tailored pieces, deconstructed silhouettes, and handwoven garments look exactly like classical menswear tropes, except they should not only that.

“I’m not going to reinvent the wheel; in menswear there are plenty of classic elements you can work around and that communicate very clearly… I attempt to reshape, literally reshape, these items by putting certain subtleties in the development, pleating elements and make them form of more sober, more minimalistic, one could say, even though it’s more like a concentration of an idea,” Van Essche said over Zoom.

“I attempt to make them more open, freer, to emphasise the form of natural elegance that every one has, and I believe that that’s my predominant focus, to try to not force any person into something but just [allow them to] integrate the garment into their life,” he added.

Van Essche is to indicate his fall 2023 collection on Wednesday at Santa Maria Novella, the striking Thirteenth-century complex in Florence’s city center, because the designer project of this season’s Pitti Uomo.

The fair is thought for being a catalyzer and aggregator of the most recent menswear trends and skills, but Van Essche’s invitation got here as a surprise. The designer has been in business for 12 years but as an independent company, his brand has been somewhat area of interest and off-the-radar, his work and creativity not immediate or flashy.

Based in Antwerp, he has showcased his collections in Paris during men’s week over the past few seasons. The Pitti call got here at a time of evolution for the corporate, especially business-wise.

“We’ve at all times been quite deliberately slow, let’s say step-by-step, we’ve had a really cautious, let’s-learn-to-walk-before-we-run form of approach but we felt we’re ready,” Van Essche noted.

He had already began working on the gathering and was excited about recent presentation formats (no more static showroom appointments or pandemic-induced fashion movies) before the Pitti Uomo folks got here knocking on the door.

“It was a really nice coincidence,” Van Essche said.

He didn’t reveal much of the presentation beyond saying it’ll mix a catwalk aspect with live performance elements. The result, he said, is “near ourselves and in addition very distant.”

The topic of authenticity got here up continuously throughout the conversation because the designer has dodged trends throughout his profession, pursuing the enhancement of his subtle and soigné lexicon, embedded with textile and dyeing research and craftsmanship.

“I don’t feel like a black sheep, but I don’t know if I feel like a dressmaker [either], within the sense that I’m not that busy with the relevance or strength of a certain thing. I sometimes feel more like an architect; I believe more about clothing construction and the way we live in them and the private relationship,” Van Essche explained.

“I do know I’m not doing things that many are doing, it’s not an enormous stream but I don’t feel lonely; there are enough people pushing the identical form of stories, or philosophy,” he said, humbly citing the late Issey Miyake as amongst his fashion heroes.

For his first big display, the gathering, largely developed before the Pitti call, comprises re-editions and revisited silhouettes drawn from the archives, “things that I wanted to emphasise,” as Van Essche put it.

“There are some recent shapes but when it comes to techniques it’s more like refining what’s already there, quite than reinventing. The last three, 4 seasons I form of have the sensation that there was an additional layer, deeper into the gathering, there’s a level of maturity within the work that wasn’t there before; I feel there are a lot of subtle details and I’m very joyful for a way it’s coming together,” Van Essche said.

Built on his “open shape” approach geared toward ease and luxury, the designer added recent layers via handweaving made within the Antwerp atelier, the shibori tie-dye technique, and use of metal dyes. The resulting color palette is earthy and sometimes spiced up with flashes of sunflower yellow, deep purple and reddish tones.

They “mix so nicely with the frescos on the wall” at Santa Maria Novella, a location that immediately clicked when he first visited it. “The framework of the gathering was set before but the best way I coloured it it’s really form of anchored to this location,” Van Essche said.

The lineup will include a few collaborations, with Mühlbauer, a felt hat maker based in Vienna, Austria, and with longtime Japanese shoe partner Petrosolaum.

The designer has big expectations for showing at Pitti Uomo, which he characterised as a “gigantic platform,” and although he has ambitions to grow his company’s scope and size, he doesn’t wish to compromise his vision.

“I value my creative freedom and my independence lots,” he said.