After more than 15 years in New York, designer Tom Van Dorpe has taken over the artistic direction of the brand The Kooples.

With an already illustrious career as a magazine fashion editor, stylist, and designer, Tom Van Dorpe has taken his talents to Paris for&nbsp;his next role as Creative Director of <a href="https://www.lofficielusa.com/fashion/best-stylish-winter-coats-shop" target="_blank">The Kooples</a>. After years of consulting for other brands, the Belgian designer leads the vision on the brand&#39;s new Spring/Summer 2021 collection. To give his insight on the label&#39;s new direction, Van Dorpe spoke to L&#39;OFFICIEL about the inspiration behind the newest collection and what he brings to The Kooples as a whole.&nbsp;

L&#39;OFFICIAL: You have been a fashion editor for V Magazine and V Man, you have styled <a href="https://www.lofficielusa.com/fashion/social-media-account-rihanna-runway-street-style-looks-twitter" target="_blank">Rihanna</a>&#39;s catwalks for Puma, and you have consulted&nbsp;for a number of brands. You like the taste of the challenge.

TOM VAN DORPE: Fashion is a giant playground where the possibilities are endless. Starting in this environment by working for a magazine is great for meeting photographers, coming up with an idea, and selling it. And that&#39;s exactly what I&#39;m doing today for The Kooples. In addition, I have always worked in men&#39;s and women&#39;s fashion, like today at The Kooples, which is quite rare for a stylist. Finally, even if these modes are not the same, they have a lot in common, and even more today.

L&#39;O: How did you rethink the brand?

TVD:&nbsp;As if I had reworked the editorial line of a magazine. I kept its DNA, very strong, but I breathed modernity into advertising campaigns as well as on social networks or through e-shopping, each silhouette of which I developed for more digital visibility. Even though I didn&#39;t study fashion like a designer would, being a stylist has allowed me to work very closely with the team.

L&#39;O: The Kooples is a story of fashion, but also of casting.

TVD:&nbsp;Last winter&#39;s campaign allowed us to visually redefine the brand&#39;s image through couples&mdash;newlyweds, parents, brothers, sisters, and soul mates. Then I developed the key looks of the season with the fundamentals of the brand, always in a fairly <a href="https://www.lofficielusa.com/beauty/rock-star-hair-evolution-joan-jett-miley-cyrus" target="_blank">rock &#39;n&#39; roll</a> spirit. For Spring/Summer 2021, I gave a context to the collection with references and a range of colors in order to be able to tell a story and link the collections for men and women. Before, each person defined themselves&nbsp;in relation to an established style&mdash;&#39;<a href="https://www.lofficielusa.com/beauty/how-to-get-70s-bangs-hair-styles" target="_blank">70s</a>, rock, boyish, etc., whereas now we mix everything up. Each garment does not have to correspond to an exclusive style&nbsp;but, on the contrary, must be able to extract from it to be mixed.

L&#39;O: The Kooples is an accessible luxury brand with an urban rock spirit. What touch did you add to this DNA?

TVD:&nbsp;I like the idea of mixing strong and very unwise silhouettes with my &ldquo;clean&rdquo; approach.&nbsp;I think that&#39;s the look of the moment.

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L&#39;O: Will we find elements of &ldquo;la Parisienne&rdquo; in your collections?

TVD:&nbsp;When I met Romain Guinier, the CEO of the house, for the first time, he explained to me that The Kooples woman has a rebellious elegance. And that&#39;s exactly how I see the Parisian woman, always very elegant, but with an unexpected, casual side. It&#39;s very nice to have this woman that everyone adores as a starting point for my collections.

L&#39;O: Who are your muses, the couples who inspire you?

TVD:&nbsp;There are, of course, the legendary <a href="https://www.lofficielusa.com/fashion/how-to-dress-like-jane-birkin" target="_blank">Jane Birkin</a> and Serge Gainsbourg, <a href="https://www.lofficielusa.com/film-tv/timothee-chalamet-pays-homage-edward-scissorhands-super-bowl-lv-commercial-cadillac-winona-ryder" target="_blank">Johnny Depp</a> and <a href="https://www.lofficielusa.com/fashion/young-winona-ryder-90s-style-fashion" target="_blank">Winona Ryder,</a> Fran&ccedil;oise Hardy and Jacques Dutronc, but I did not want to start from this idea to give a new spirit to the brand. It&#39;s difficult to say who are the muses of today, so I preferred to focus on atypical couples of today. For Spring/Summer 2021, it will be Vincent Cassel and Tina Kunakey because they&nbsp;100 percent&nbsp;fit&nbsp;this new story that I am writing with the brand. He is charismatic; she, very modern and&nbsp;of the moment, plays with glamor and naturalness and all the codes of femininity.

L&#39;O: In addition to being the star of the new campaign, Tina has made a collection for you.

​​​​​​​TVD:&nbsp;A wardrobe for Vincent with natural materials, beige and black, which she also appropriated. While on him it&#39;s relaxed, on her it&#39;s more boyish. Sharing a closet is part of her style, that&#39;s what she does on a daily basis. We, therefore, find a magnificent straight blazer, a white shirt, a well-aged T-shirt. In addition to this collection, she has imagined a bucket bag which I hope will have the same success as the previous collaborations.

L&#39;O: What about your Spring/Summer 2021 collection?

​​​​​​​TVD:&nbsp;The idea was a &ldquo;positive rebellion.&quot;&nbsp;The Kooples notion of rebellion is often dark, but with the year we have just passed, I wanted to soften things up with organic materials and a more minimal style, in the first part of the collection, and in the second, prints, pastels, and light denim.

L&#39;O: Arriving in a new country, working for a new brand, all this in the midst of a pandemic&mdash;has it affected your work?

​​​​​​​TVD:&nbsp;For 15 years, I traveled every week between fashion weeks and shoots, it was very intense. When I moved to Paris, I wanted to focus on a brand. The pandemic is a real shock, and focusing on The Kooples allows me to move forward. And when I look at what we&#39;ve accomplished, we can be happy&mdash;whether it&#39;s the collaboration with Tina, the work with suppliers for organic materials, the unification of men&#39;s and women&#39;s collections, or&nbsp;the diversity in our castings with gay and trans couples in order to be as inclusive as possible. Honestly, it&#39;s pretty amazing.

Tom Van Dorpe Talks New Direction at The Kooples

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Tom Van Dorpe Talks New Direction at The Kooples

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