Dries Van Noten FW13 Womens

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whilst i cant deny his extraordinary talent and imagination after the first serape, mexican/peruvian (?) looks he lost me with the colorful flapper ostrich feather numbers, but even that transition was pretty seamless considering they are worlds apart.

i'm glad he's delving further into skirts over trousers, even getting more menswear influence inflected then before.

ivory, navy and burgundy everything here is genuinely garcons (and i dont mean comme). i hope i used the term properly, forgive me if not.

[Dane]

I like the oversized prints (stripes/florals/paisley), and the layering is styled nicely...but either I'm just getting old and cranky (yes), or this season's womenswear has been a tad dull and somber thus far.

[laika]

^how on earth are you getting "dull and somber" from this?

I find it really exuberant...all the floaty, fluffy, feathery mixed with pops of luxury and underpinned by masculine tailoring.

Inspiration was Fred and Ginger!

FEBRUARY 28, 2013
PARIS
By Tim Blanks

It's always the quiet ones you have to watch. At the same time that Dries Van Noten, scholar and gentleman of the parish of Antwerp, noticed that the world had surrendered to the formalized glitz of television shows featuring infinite combinations of ballroom-dancing celebrities (on ice!), he and partner Patrick Vangheluwe became fixated on Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers dancing cheek to cheek in Top Hat, the 1935 classic that, in its dancing sequences, borders on purest ecstasy.

And that's how "Fred and Ginger" became the inspiration for Van Noten's new collection: classic embodiments of masculinity and femininity, subversively fused into one under fashion's umbrella. It's been a subtle theme of the season so far, but where other designers used fur to stand for the feminine, Dries said it with feathers, and that made the point so much more effectively. A deliriously mixed message was sent out by Van Noten's own favorite outfit—a mannish white shirt with a necklet of paste diamonds, navy skirt trailing plumes of ostrich anchored by crystal, over gray flannel pants. If it was barely matched by the daddy-huge cabled sweater over a varsity-stripe skirt that dissolved into flapper fringes (with crepe-soled oxfords as footwear), and the brocade skirt that feminized a plus-size overcoat and chunky knit (again, the paste diamonds, and this time, high heels with ankle socks), that's only because feathers trumped fringing and brocade on the Ginger scale. Froths of ostrich were a perversely glamorous counterpoint to the flat-shoed, gray-flanneled sobriety of the outfits they anchored.

But there was a sexy slouch to the result. It felt like a grown-up evolution of last season's grunge. So did Kid Koala's soundtrack, which synthesized the elegance of Cole Porter's "Night and Day" with the primal throb of Suicide's "Cheree." Dries had his own feelings about synthesis: "There are boys and girls, there is night and day, but above all there is love." Which is exactly what his audience today was left feeling.

[Dane]

All that navy...I find it so drab. Not saying its a funeral or anything, and there are definitely some beautiful pieces, but its hardly exciting.

[laika]

I think you must have SAD.

[Dane]

Oh, I have no doubt!

[Shucks]

is it just me, or is the color balance way fucked up in these photos - too much blue tint? i'd rather see the clothes with the correct colors, than some 'moody' post-production thingy...

the colors looked a lot brighter in other photo series of this collection...

[Dane]

is that what it is? maybe I'm totally off then. will have to find other photos.

[laika]

i think you're on to something shucks.

try here for better colors.