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Dries Van Noten

Fall 2023 RTW Menswear

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Properties

Date: January 20, 2023
Location: Paris, France
Looks: 60
Brand: Dries Van Noten
URL: wwd.com

Critic Reviews

By Miles Socha for WWD

Dries Van Noten returned to another parking garage for his fall men’s show, and on each level guests encountered a shopping cart full of chilled Stella Artois and an experimental electronic musician producing fizzing, burbling or buzzing noises.

Once up all the ramps, and then a couple of flights of stairs, guests finally alighted on the show-space proper: a standing-only affair with a drum kit on one stage and stacks of synthesizers on the other.

Belgian musicians Lander & Adriaan, specialists in what the show notes called “sophisti-rave,” took their positions and proceeded to coax an impressive amount of sophisti-rave from those few instruments, adding a pulse-pounding electricity to the show.

“The energy and self-expression of rave parties in the ‘90s, but mixed with beautiful surreal elements of nature” was how Van Noten summed up the collection backstage.

His starting point was a book he read last summer about Alexander von Humboldt, a German geographer, naturalist and explorer born in 1769 and the man credited with having invented the concept of ecology.

Van Noten etched both themes with restraint: The rave vibe was conveyed mainly by roomy pants festooned with pockets and straps; the nature theme via botanical prints and motifs — here green shoots forking off across cots and pants, there an eagle caught in flight on a creamy crewneck sweater.

Occasionally the two narratives converged beautifully, as in a safari shirt embroidered with gold and silver garlands, or a silky souvenir jacket with a dizzying print of diving birds and exotic blooms.

But mostly this show exalted Van Noten’s impressive range as a designer. With its strong shoulders and raised waists, the tailoring had a subtle retro allure and a masculine swagger. Silhouettes were either big on top and narrow on top or vice versa.

As a colorist and print purveyor, Van Noten has few peers, here blending dusty colors and complex patterns and textures in ways most pleasing to the eye.

If anything gave a jolt, it was the number 23 writ huge on a mesh football jersey and on roomy track pants. Was the designer winking to a milestone in his long fashion career, or winking to his favorite sports hero, perhaps?

Der — it was simply a reference to the 2023 season and some looks had 24 on the back, Van Noten clarified.

“We keep it simple,” he said with a yelp of laughter.

By Sarah Mower for Vogue

Climbing up through the gloom of a carpark on the miserable January night of a French general strike, we emerged onto a floor to witness a Dries Van Noten kind of a rave going on. There’s something about Belgian designers and their perma-fascination for youth sub-cults—Raf Simons’s swansong for his own label culminated in a giant warehouse rave in London last fall. Yet despite his choice of surroundings, we need never fear that Van Noten’s aesthetic imagination will wholly cross over into a bout of subversive teen anger. In truth, he’s a romantic. He loves flowers and gardening. And where he’s really sharp and hard, is as a tailor.

This collection illustrated both sides of that coin. In the men’s fashion battle that is ensuing over who has the greatest of long, lean greatcoats this season, Van Noten fielded a killer contender. It’s at number 18 in the show. A double-breasted brown English wool, with slightly exaggerated shoulders and a distinctly nipped-in, almost old-time Hollywood movie-star waist.

“We worked a lot on the silhouette, so you have this very precise shape in the tailoring of this coat,” he said backstage. “The narrow waist hints also at a historical aspect.” A piece like this can make you want to linger to analyze what’s significant about it. It’s understated, yet redolent of the comeback of a certain masculine glamour that suddenly feels avant-garde.

Besides the things he did with tailoring—a shoutout for a brilliant peacoat here—the rest of the collection was inspired by a two connected themes. “The freedom and self-expression of rave culture from the ’90s, combined with the quite surreal beauty of nature,” as he put it. Strange partners, you might think, but Van Noten had found a novel seasonal way to exert his love of botanical prints in the work of the early 19th century German geologist and explorer Alexander von Humboldt. Once, when up a mountain at high altitude in the Andes, he wrote that “he started feeling trippy,” as Van Noten put it. “And so—rave!”

Well, if that was a bit of a stretch as a conceptual leap, it did give him the excuse to design into some of his favorite signatures in flowery, exotic prints. The rave looks were played out through washed-out linen pants, swirly prints on jackets, and multiple layerings of lacy-knits and drapey sweatshirts.

These are all of the casual separates that will be bought piece by piece by men, come summer. Wardrobing for men and for women is a strength of the Dries Van Noten brand. But that doesn’t stop the purely extreme fashion statement in this collection, that standout coat being the most memorable thing he showed that night.