Runway: Dries Van Noten S/S20

Soulwax provided a soundtrack, their rendition of “Funkytown” by Lipp’s Inc, with which they peppered the voice of Nancy Wang (LCD Soundsystem) shouting, “Excuse me!”

This vocal byte was a loud and clear message from Dries - brands have been invoking his signature as of late -combining tasteful opulence, patterns, prints, color theory, and hand-embroidery that he himself popularized. This was him politely reminding these labels to get out of his way.

Dream-like and cinematic are old friends of Dries. For this collection, outfits were shown in pieces broken out among different models, as one look sees a pair of tapestry-like yellow trousers paired with a cafe-au-lait checkered suit jacket (with the “matching” pieces of those sets coming out on later models). In classic Van Noten fashion,

Scrub the word “clashing” from your mind. These sentiments don’t exist here. Dries shows us that when applied to familiar tailoring, patterns can coexist on a single body, as he showcases beautiful environments of texture and color on each model .

Dries’ “The Morning After” collection from FW13 was a true-to-its-name display of what Vogue called, “a dressed-in-haste, borrowed-from-your-girlfriend/boyfriend accidental opulence that might happen the day after the night before.” This exact sort of ideal was applied to his SS20 show, and it allowed Dries to bend and shape all ideas of masculinity and femininity to his whim.

Dries felt free, like he was just “doing him” in its fullest form. And we, on the sidelines, all benefit from his joie de vivre.

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Let us know some of your favorite pieces from Dries Van Noten’s latest spring/summer collection below, and be sure to check out some of our other S/S20 runway recaps from Paris Fashion Week 2020.