PARIS — The best part of Wednesday at Paris Fashion Week came in the middle — when Dries Van Noten showed his spring 2020 collection in the stark, cement back bunker of L’Op?ra Bastille and the models’ glorious plumage transformed the dreary quotidian into a mesmerizing dream.
There were some fun clothes at Lanvin, from a cobalt-blue suit with eccentrically cut sleeves to cartoon prints inspired by an old comic strip, “Little Nemo in Slumberland,” which ran in the New York Herald in the early 1900s.
Lanvin was followed by a brief but expensive coffee at the H?tel de Crillon where Eli Mizrahi, who describes himself as a party guy and entrepreneur, was ensconced to present his new line, M?not. It is for party girls who can’t afford Balmain but who want the same over-the-top ostentation. Mizrahi is a whirlwind who happily announces that he lives on two hours of sleep per night, sources his patternmakers on Instagram and jet sets around the globe.
His clothes? Shiny, sexy, short, tight.
And then, it’s time for Dries Van Noten.
A pianist tucked into a corner played an anticipatory note, something in the vicinity of an A flat, as the first model walked onto the runway wearing straight white denim trousers and a midnight jacket with a cinched waist. She was the quiet before the storm of color and pattern, before shapes exploded with volume and before fabrics began to float on the air.
Fashion has its creative limits. Designers can fuss with color; they can tweak the shapes; they can rework proportions. On Wednesday afternoon, everything seemed to be in wondrous, magnificent play. A bright fuchsia gown flowed open as a model walked. Tiers of scarlet ruffles tumbled over simple white denim pants. A white tank top was the simple foil to an elaborate skirt that trailed across the runway. Tiger stripes danced alongside lush florals. Skirts ballooned over slim trousers. Oversize trousers balanced generously proportioned blazers. Lustrous jacquards topped humble printed cotton.
There was so much going on at once that it could have easily become too much — a feast that transforms into grotesque gluttony with one morsel too many. But it was all perfectly balanced. The line — the invisible line that separates daring artistry from dramatic failure — was never crossed.
The collection, in its controlled grandeur, was born from a unique collaboration between Van Noten and the designer Christian Lacroix. Long retired from fashion and focused on costume design, Lacroix was renowned for creating le pouf. It was a silhouette that defined the 1980s, a skirt that was inflated on air and crinolines and that came to represent the opulence of the period. Lacroix debuted this silhouette when he was the creative director at Jean Patou and it brought him such attention that he was wooed by the French fashion behemoth LVMH, which launched the Christian Lacroix brand in 1987.
Van Noten turned to Lacroix when he realized that so much of the research he was doing for his spring collection kept bringing him to the French designer’s past work. Van Noten was looking to inject more grandeur and opulence into this collection, and he was fascinated with and inspired by Lacroix’s aesthetic. When the two sat down together, it turned out that Lacroix was a customer of the Belgian designer’s menswear.
