PARIS — Last season Dries Van Noten brought his Spring / Summer 2015 runway show to an arresting crescendo wherein the models came to a halt, seating themselves on the richly carpeted runway. The scene was as unexpected as it was evocative, a sea of calm in an otherwise turbulent month of ready-to-wear. On Wednesday afternoon in a gilded salon at Hôtel de Ville there was no repeat of that grande spectacle per se, but the celebrated Belgian designer nevertheless sculpted a moment in time in which the noise of the world was stilled albeit temporarily. To start, a runway soundtrack of a capella variations of pop songs from Blondie to Beyoncé accompanied models as they floated down the lengthy runway. The musical passages were familiar and yet made vulnerable shorn of their instrumentation to create a fearless beauty that echoes the designer’s oeuvre. In that space Van Noten presented a women’s collection for fall with an omnivorous sensibility for elegance and utility that would find audience in the salon or the street. This was Dries through and through realized in great part to amongst others Maja Salamon and Karolin Wolter.
Credits include: Client, Dries Van Noten; Collection, Women’s Ready-To-Wear Fall / Winter 2015; Clothing design and styling, Dries Van Noten; Hair, Sam McKnight; Makeup, Peter Philips; Production, Villa Eugénie; Casting, Russell Marsh; Video, Damien Neva.
