The latest collection from Dries Van Noten, a magna print meditation and posh battlefield chic aesthetic that won the designer an enormous cheer in his show in Paris.
Dries has been very good lately at dipping into all sorts of different cultural inputs. Where his February men's collection was based on Dutch artist Gijs Frieling or his last women's show on photographs by young artist James Reeve, today he went in a completely opposite direction for fall 2012. The designer looked at classic Asian dress. He was even photographed in a Korean pink silk coat for a backstage TV interview, and went about deconstructing a pattern of print from the two dimensional into the three-dimensional. This meant that classic sleeves were aligned as print on the center of the body to give the collection a fresh spin and unexpected twist.
He also teamed up with Victoria & Albert Museum in London, tapping into their Oriental costume archives with brilliant results. Clearly, Van Noten always likes to balance his mighty inspirations with street wear and his military khakis grounded the colorful print party on his dresses and coats.
