Dries' Conceptional Magna Patchwork

It's the true mark of an important designer that he can take a concept, translate it into beautiful clothes and then see them influence the way women dress all over the worldclass='yshortcuts' id='lw_1330520300_4'Sou. Which is what will happen with 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 on Wednesday, Febhis Shirt' by The Irrepressibles, strongR: C. 29n class='yshortcuts' id='.

Van Noten has been staging his women's shows for the past several seasons in Paris' baroque City Hall, though this fall 2012 collection looked like the one most suitable for this locationid='lw_1330520300_1'Paris Fashion Week/sp. For the very mix of strict neo-classical fluted columns and curly gilded decoration was echoed by the spiraling designs on the clothesassisting at span class.

Dries has been very good lately at dipping into all sorts of different cultural inputsfollowed if you hadn't become a design. 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 2012t her and she was actually. The designer looked at classic Asian dressgner span class='yshortcuts' id='lw_1330520300_0'M. 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 I would have loved to be in the. This meant that classic sleeves were aligned as print on the center of the body to give the collection a fresh spin and unexpected twisttial accessory and why?br / Me.

He also teamed up with Victoria & Albert Museum in London, tapping into their Oriental costume archives with brilliant resultsshortcuts' id='lw_1330520300_5'JIKI/s. 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 coatsshortcuts' id='lw_13305.

It all felt very new, in particular the officer's ceremonial coats, whose bullion insignia were reimagined as cranes flying toward the heavenss' id='lw_1330520300_3'sources of i. There was a particularly elegant turquoise finale where a group of the kimono prints looked like Escher architectural drawings, that brought an appreciative rumble of sighs from the audience, perched on bleachers in the historic settingIrrepressibles, strongR: Cast.

In terms of silhouette, however, Van Noten cleaves a little too much to the restrainedm/strongstrong: What in you. He clearly finds short dresses and exposed flesh a little vulgar, so the collection did miss more adventure in its cuttingty of timelessness about . Where just above the knee is the skirt length throughout all the major shows in Europe this month, he finished half way down the skinn, dead, alive or from fiction, would y. An oddity when he wraps his women in military coats that the designer does not feel they are tough enough to go out in public in a short skirt/ M,S,:/strong I would have been an.

That said, this was an impressive fashion statement by a designer who is very much setting the stylistic agenda today



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