Never mind that he just sold his company to Puig. For Dries Van Noten, fashion is personal. “The way you gesture, the way that you stand…” he said postshow. “It is an attitude, [which] can be also quite negative, but I love people who can have an attitude.”
And people with attitude — read: confident, adult women — are Van Noten’s primary constituency. They love fashion and acknowledge trends that make sense for them, but never go crazy. Van Noten gets it.
He also gets casualization and a good contrast. A master of the latter, for fall he started with a category he loves: workwear. “What is more beautiful?” he queried, playing the collection against couture references, which he kept in careful check. “I don’t want to make couture, I like to make clothes,” Van Noten said, almost contradicting his own oppositional construct. Almost. Van Noten is a pragmatist with a yen for the outsized flourish of the haute variety, and incorporated some references here.
But as always, Van Noten started with function. There, too, he wielded his hand deftly, sometimes with full pieces — anoraks, pocketed popovers, utility coats — and sometimes with the addition of big pockets on coats or skirts. The
Follow WWD on Twitter or become a fan on Facebook.Read More…