Working men take Belgian designer Kris Van Assche catwalk by storm

Working men storm Kris Van Assche catwalk

PARIS — For his spring-summer 2011 menswear collection Friday, Kris Van Assche sent out working men, their low-slung trousers and tank tops splattered with black paint and their hands covered in charcoal dust.

The Belgian designer, a critical favorite who also designs menswear for Dior Homme, brought waistlines down as far as they could go, delivering pants with paper-bag closures cinched low around the hips. Some wore leather butchers’ aprons that poked out from beneath their linen suits or strange hybrid mechanics’ tool belts cinched over their blazers.

“I’ve always been interested in men that work, men who aren’t afraid to dirty their hands,” Van Assche told The Associated Press in a backstage interview. “I always like to mix up the workwear and the tailoring, I’m always making references to mechanics and real workers … and in the end, the references blur. I like that.”

While much of the collection stayed true to Van Assche’s perennial palette of black and dark gray, he picked up on the paint-splattered vibe in the air in Paris — where designers including fellow Belgian Dries Van Noten and Jean Paul Gaultier also showed paint or bleach splashed menswear.

Van Assche said the models’ charcoal stained palms — and the blinding white catwalk — were a reference to Richard Avedon’s seminal work, “In the American West,” in which the late, great U.S. photographer shot blue collar workers and drifters against a white backdrop.