Dries Van Noten's January A/W 18 menswear show was "a fresh start" to celebrate a new beginning after a glorious 2017. In a way yesterday's womenswear show at Paris' Hotel de Ville revolved around the same principle.
Sadly, there were no marbling fabric effects as seen on the men's runway, but there were plenty of sensible garments combined with elaborate embroideries, collages of fabrics, intricate prints, feathery details and a credible painterly palette that featured inky blues, rusty oranges, mustard yellow and moss green juxtaposed with metallics.
The key pieces were covered in hand-drawn ball-point patterns, a technique mastered at Van Noten's atelier. While some of the trouser suits covered in these motifs were a bit over the top, the swirls and intricacies on the coats were mesmerising.
Tailoring details such as the leg-of-mutton sleeves on shirts and trench coats gave a historical yet impressively wearable twist to these garments while there were hints at flappers in Twenties-inspired dresses decorated with hems of fluttering marabou feathers or in the metallic pleated inserts that created textile fractures on two printed dresses.
Aside from the soft check shirts and sophisticated Mongolian lamb coats decorated with blue marabou feathers there were also elegant hints at sportswear, perfectly integrated into functional dresses.
Intense patterns and dense textures told a story about craftsmanship, and so did materials such as raffia employed for decorative fringes on skirts and dresses or covering entire jackets. The silhouettes were harmoniously as ever, offering a wardrobe for a wide range of consumers and also for all seasons.
The point behind the collection was almost too easy to grasp - fashion may not be able to heal the world, but high quality and durable clothes can empower.
Van Noten identified an arty reference in this collection as a link with Art Brut or "raw art" as defined by Jean Dubuffet, that is art produced by outsiders, amateur creative minds who may not have any proper gallery contracts, so the untrained, from children to psychiatric patients and prisoners.
Yet the colours and assemblages of prints and clashing colours often called to mind other artworks such as Fernand Léger's "Elément mécanique" and "Charlot cubiste".
While this was a very different and quieter show compared to some of the past ones like the 2016 Marchesa Casati collection, it posed a question - is it a fashion crime to dispel magic runway atmospheres in favour of a less dreamy but more serious approach?
It seemed indeed that Van Noten was willing to return to more classic fashion presentations almost wondering if it is necessary to create elaborate sets and settings, include live music, and maybe even have celebrities sashaying down the runway or models carrying copies of their own heads.
In the last few decades runways turned into veritable spectacles and now we all expect grand emotions, profoundly philosophical or political questions and amazing sets that can be easily posted on social media to prove we were there or we wished we had been.
Too often secondary runway messages (who was there, who wore what, etc) become so amplified that they deafen people, almost making you forget that you're supposed to look at the clothes before trying to spot who's sitting in the front row.
Who knows, maybe Van Noten wasn't thinking directly about Art Brut but at the final meaning behind it: the designer was struck by the fact that outsider artists aren't bound to galleries, so they don't feel their pressures, make what they want and do not produce art for money related reasons.
Dubuffet wrote in his Prospectus aux amateurs de tout genre that his aim was "not the mere gratification of a handful of specialists, but rather the man in the street when he comes home from work....it is the man in the street whom I feel closest to, with whom I want to make friends and enter into confidence, and he is the one I want to please and enchant by means of my work."
Maybe that was also Van Noten's final message, pleasing the consumer rather than the fashion catwalk goers or maybe he was hiding in the runway a silent message about dropping out of the fashion week schedule that is becoming more relentless and more useless.
You can bet that, if Dries Van Noten ever decides to do so he won't be abandoned by his fans; who knows, if he drops out of the fashion cycle, he may even have more time for other collateral projects such as starting a publishing house and releasing colouring books for grown-ups with his obsessively swirling and spontaneous biro-like prints (they would be a hit).
Maybe that's a project for the future, in the meantime his Los Angeles-based fans should take a note in their diary as Reiner Holzemer's "Dries" will be screened at The Los Angeles Theatre Center (on 16th and 18th March) as part of the Architecture & Design Film Festival (ADFF), curated by Kyle Bergman.
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