Dries Van Noten: Going Art Nouveau
By: Mari Davis

DALLAS, Mar 11, 2004/ FW/ --- The Fall 2004 season is about fashion history, when most designers opened fashion tomes, read the annals of fashion, and translated it for the 21st century public. Dries Van Noten did the same, going back in time, during the first two decades of the 20th century and came up with an eclectically global collection.

The early 1900s and 1920s saw the birth of great art movements. From art nouveau, to art deco to cubism, it was a time of innovation, discovery and challenges to the status quo, resulting to new philosophies and intellectual thinking.

Dries Van Noten gravitating to that era is logical, even expected. With a penchant of mixing the classic and the contemporary, and his view of women as an intellectual type whose big enjoyment is traveling because it is educational for her, Dries Van Noten dresses her in soft and gentle clothes.

And for Fall 2004, the Antwerp-native wants to see her in deep V-neck sweaters decorated with graphics and a flowing skirt echoing the same graphics on her shirt.

He sees her in houndstooth or big vertical stripes long coats that hide her figure and only shows a hint of what is underneath.

But when she takes off that bulky coat, she becomes a different person with her flapper inspired tunics, again decorated with graphical elements or wide-legged pants paired with embroidered shirts, which are once again reminiscent of art deco designs.

And like the art nouveau movement, the collection is full of contradictory images and ideas, with both structured and flowing silhouettes.

But instead of being dissonant, it whispered resonance, a testament of Dries Van Noten’s genius in design.

Dries Van Noten

Dries Van Noten

Dries Van Noten

Dries Van Noten