The sheer beauty of Dries Van Noten's Spring collection was inspired by John Everett Millais' Ophelia, the Pre-Raphaelite image that launched a million hippie fantasies. In the painting, Ophelia floats dreamily in a magical woodland setting. Van Noten re-created the mood with dusky golden lighting and a mossy forest floor—actually a carpet specially created by the Argentinean artist Alexandra Kehayoglou. (It will be reused for special events around the world, Dries assured us.)
Van Noten also mentioned A Midsummer Night's Dream as a reference. The gossamer lightness and gilded fabrics loaned a fairy-tale element. Colors were deep and muted, as if illuminated by sunlight filtered through trees. There were dreamy intangibles, like the dresses made from tiers of chiffon floating from the thinnest straps, a twig of gold clasping the model's throat. Then there were more substantial things, like the diaphanous shirt in striped organza over silk shorts that was anchored by a striped tank in cut chiffon. The masculine elements that always weave their way into Van Noten's womenswear were delicately rendered here as necktie silks and pajama patterns in the filmiest fabrics. If the show was a stylist's triumph, layering the infinite gorgeous possibilities of color, pattern, and weight into persuasively coherent outfits, the foundation of it all was Van Noten's roots in Antwerp, a city where merchants once brought the world's most sumptuous exotica to market. In that spirit, the designer created fabrics that looked pieced together from brocades and hand-blocked silks; they were actually jacquards woven in one piece. (Van Noten shook his head as he recalled the complexity of the process.)
Van Noten is the past master of the nice touch—the invitation arriving as a small transparent box of moss, for instance. At the finale today, after the models had made their final march-past, they settled on the mossy carpet like languid dryads…or festivalgoers at the height of the original Summer of Love. And that pointed to the idealistic underpinnings of the collection. The news headlines reek of horror. It's fashion's job to remind us that beauty is a human need. Maybe even, as a great poet once wrote, a fundamental truth.
