Dries Van Noten took a considered look at craft and construction for his SS24 menswear collection. Delivering an education in discrete, disruptive elegance, the Belgian designer ditched the elaborate printmaking techniques he’d mastered last season in favour of sleek tailoring, strong silhouettes, fluidity and levity. Where swirling graphics, exotic blooms and dizzying depictions of diving birds once were, quiet suggestions proxied, bringing a lopsided shadow motif created by layering print-on-print to simple suiting. Hypnotic visuals remained, but they were soft-pedalled and appeared only intermittently on gossamer tunics and dusters.
It was a study of masculinity too, staged on a high floor of a condemned building in Paris’s 17th arrondissement that was, until recently, jilted by the telecom Orange. Seemingly as worn and dilapidated as the industrial room around them, two suit jackets, both paired with shimmering sequin shorts, were dyed and treated as if they’d already seen decades of wear. Bending the binary were deep-v knits with matching wrapped skirts: contemporary co-ords. Trousers were defined by high waists and flared legs too, and high neck shirts were almost as elongated as dresses while delicate chain belts and jewellery with Tiger’s Eye stones added in a sprinkling of romance.
Silhouettes were long and lean, but parkas still bulged and unconventional colourways made for a dazzling display of rust, ecru, lilac, ink and olive tones as well as apricot, citrine, mint and ombre effect treatments. A mustard bomber jacket featured sculptural raglan sleeves while a belted raglan shoulder coat in herringbone wool was cut with zig-zags of camel and black. Lustrous nylon dusters, windbreakers, flowing safari shirts and sport shorts floated from the body like high fashion feathers, in turn “celebrating subtle details and nuance over bold gestures”. By taking a step back, Dries Van Noten tapped into the holy grail of uncomplicated allure.
Photography courtesy of Imaxtree.
