Images of people wearing Fred Perry have been on Kris Van Assche‘s mood boards since forever, dating back to his signature brand, and his Dior Homme days.

“Sports and diverse youth subcultural identities have been a major source of inspiration,” he said in an interview. “Fred Perry stands for that.”

Now he’s collaborating with the British heritage brand, founded in 1952, on a 13-piece collection. “So in a way this feels like coming full circle,” he related. “This time, I bring my world and inspiration to the brand that has inspired me so often in the past.”

Van Assche also brought personal photos of flowers to the project, appearing on badges that liven up polo shirts and caps — and his longstanding exploration of that coming-of-age moment when young men graduate from tracksuits to tailored suits.

“I have often spoken about how I wanted to provide young men with their first suit,” he mused.

The Belgian designer said he used to purchase skinny suits at vintage stores when he was studying fashion at Antwerp’s Royal Academy of Fine Arts, often wearing them with Fred Perry shirts — and neckties.

Cue the Fred Perry x Kris Van Assche pique polo, which comes with a slender, pre-tied black necktie, allowing the wearer to determine how formal or informal they would like to appear.

“The tie symbolizes that moment many young men go through — proms, first dates — and I do enjoy romanticizing that experience,” Van Assche told WWD. “I am interested by the tensions and parallels between formal and casualwear, especially when they relate to identity, discipline and subculture.”

Meanwhile, the flower badges “symbolize perfectly how I like to blend references from old-world beauty with today’s cool.”

The co-branded collection also includes pinstriped track jackets, track pants and a track skirt, along with a casual blazer, tailored shorts and an argyle knit with trompe-l’œil layering and a half-zip sweatshirt cross-pollinated with a striped, poplin dress shirt.

“I wanted to elevate the uniform of youth — take the Fred Perry pieces and rebuild them as to erase the frontier between sports and elevated,” he explained.

Van Assche, whose fashion résumé also includes an eventful tenure at Berluti, said it was “a dream come true” to be able to visit the Fred Perry archive. “I knew these archives quite well, but they did deliver some beautiful surprises, like this knit I found with a flower motif. I decided to rework it in black and white for the collection,” he said.

The designer was also touched to learn that the brand founder, champion British tennis player Fred Perry, came from a working-class background and “clothes and self-presentation became tools for him to blend in. His relationship to clothing is particularly meaningful, and I am very touched and inspired by that.”

The Fred Perry brand, meanwhile, was drawn to Van Assche’s rebellious spirit, and his penchant for breaking rules.

“It is more about seeing how far I can stretch and push the codes without breaking the DNA,” the designer said. “I am interested by the tensions and parallels between formal and casualwear.”

Over the years, Fred Perry has collaborated with the likes of Craig Green, Comme des Garçons, Palace, Raf Simons and Amy Winehouse.

Meanwhile, Van Assche has taken on an array of different design projects since exiting Berluti in 2021, including childrenswear for Chinese kidswear giant Balabala; vases and candy dishes for Belgian homewares firm Serax; bronze vessels for the Laffanour Galerie Downtown in Paris, and activewear with a sustainable bent for Chinese activewear giant Anta.

 “I felt a certain relief in stepping away from the rollercoaster I had been on for nearly 20 years,” he said. “I wanted to shift my focus to projects that might be smaller in scale, but extremely precise.”

He confessed that editing down his fashion message to 13 pieces was a feat.

“Everything needed to be spot on,” he said, adding that “this collection feels like the closest I’ve been to my own brand for a while, yet it is obviously also very much Fred Perry. That’s what collaborations should be like: the meeting of two worlds with mutual esteem and respect.”

The collection launches on Feb. 19 at Fred Perry shops in key European cities, as well as in Tokyo, Shanghai, Delhi and Sydney, in addition to select wholesale accounts worldwide. Retail prices range from 80 euros to 450 euros.