van Tag

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...