French Dressing

Photography by Jason Kim

“Where there’s a clash of opposites, there’s tension,” says Lucas Ossendrijver, designer of menswear at the storied French house Lanvin. “That’s when things become interesting.”

This push-and-pull -- between the masculine and feminine, the casual and ceremonious, the exaggerated and understated -- has become the crux of Ossendrijver’s imprint at the label. When he first arrived at Lanvin in 2006, there was little for him to look back on to use as a starting-off point. “In terms of image, it was blank,” he says, referring to the lack of an in-house menswear archive. “But it was positive, actually, because it gave me freedom to think and rethink what would be relevant.”