Dries Van Noten presents the spring summer 2023 collection as part of Paris Fashion Week. See the first Dries Van Noten SS23 looks below.
Collection notes
Darkness into light.
A story that evolves into three parts; the purity of black, the suggestion of color in faded pastels, and a new rendering of flower print.
Dries Van Noten womenswear spring/summer 23 explores the contrast between these elements, the first physical women’s show since 2020. Like the black invitation giving way to glorious technicolour print, the collection progresses from dark shades into a celebration of optimism.
Malevich's Black Square
The radicality of Kazimir Malevich’s Black Square informs the segment devoted to the most total of non-colors in a series of structured pieces. Jackets with oversized shoulders - dresses with sculptural waists.
Pastels are muted, a memory of color. This stripping back allows details to pull focus; crushed pleats, fringing on cargo pants, a waterfall of layers across the body of a dress.
Flowers are a long-standing expression of Dries Van Noten. This season the house revisits earlier floral designs, manipulating their scale. Some are oversized, others shrunken to micro-prints, lending the effect of one mass of pattern. Prints and textures collide.
Protection and vulnerability.
Couture techniques explore the delicate nature of flou, but through powerful silhouettes. Transparency and lightness contrast with precision; a masculine jacket with a mousseline skirt.
A theme of surface texture and decoration is developed in the handcrafted elements; smocking, crochet, ruching, ruffles, and macrame. Matte sequins form one solid block of color. Others are iridescent, echoing the cobalt of the glass jewelry.
Accessories
Accessories are fragile yet robust; necklaces comprise hand-blown glass bubbles and droplets. Shoes with cut-away panels reveal and conceal, heels playfully curved. Others come with an abundance of frills. Brass buttons on coats become disc-like jewels.
The physicality of clothes, the sensory pleasure in their movement. Ruffles in a breeze. Dries Van Noten’s return to a womenswear catwalk show pays homage to those intimate moments.
Runway
