Dries Van Noten and Christian Lacroix—what a fantastical bromance broke out at the Opéra Bastille today! Tomorrow, we will hear the full story of exactly how these grand auteurs of fashion got together—this unlikely, delightful pairing of that tower of the Belgian north, Van Noten, with the legend of the Provençal south, Monsieur Lacroix. The discovery of the surprise collaboration (worked on for months but secret till the reveal) was enough to send fashion fanatics into a frenzy. Suddenly—woo!—there it was, announced not in words but with the flourish of a single black ostrich plume and the silvery Lurex puff of an Edwardian leg-of-mutton sleeve—just the one—tied onto a white vest with a black faille ribbon.
Call it maximalist, eccentric escapism meeting pragmatic, purist minimalism. Call it two formerly diametrically opposed sensibilities of the late ’80s deciding to play together, just “for fun, the joy of dressing up,” as Van Noten put it. Call it anything you like, really, but for all those millennials who have reverentially studied Lacroix’s every landmark pouf, bow, and clashing haute couture fantasia and cursed the injustice that they were born too late to have ever seen a show of his, it was an impossible dream materializing before their very eyes.
So there they were—just because Van Noten found Lacroix’s contact and asked—working out how a sort of modern, casualized, couture-like collection could appeal to the Dries Van Noten faithful. It involved color and zebra print, flouncy flamenco skirts, bubbling sleeves, polka dots, fuchsia, rich brocade, and taffeta trains spilling off the runway—all Christian Lacroix’s talent for abundance. It also involved Van Noten’s eye for an essential core of believable wearability. Everything was layered over white jeans and white tanks; Van Noten’s ’90s Antwerp Six–era styling trick of wearing dresses over pants.
You could see the designers to-ing and fro-ing, Van Noten putting in his oversized sweatshirts; Lacroix swathing on chiffon skirts to go with. The spectaculars—and you will recognize both of them in these—were the richly embroidered matador jackets. In truth Van Noten can’t be typified as a dour northern minimalist—he’s always been known for his decorated coats, and gold bullion embroidery is a specialty of his house. Here the gold was dulled to look almost like pieces of authentic vintage costumes, sometimes with Lacroix’s signature jet beading thrown in.
Well, we’ll learn more about what went on behind the scenes tomorrow. It’s been exactly a decade since Lacroix, the supernova hero of high-’80s haute couture, left fashion and began pursuing the other love of his life, costume design. The exuberance and flamboyance of this one-season collaboration was more than a breath of fresh air—and how smart of Van Noten to intuit that this is a time when apparently extremely different points of view can be brought together to create something beautiful and that will work for a lot of people. If only today’s politicians could be so creative.
