Dries Van Noten
Wednesday
3:00p.m.
Dries van Noten
This is turning out to be the season of the ruffle, an idea which Dries van Noten owned with his stellar show. But before you roll your eyes at its ultra feminine connotations, I should clarify that he’s transformed the ruffle — long the stuff of gendered stereotypes — into something positively intelligent and cool. One by one, each look subverted some of fashion’s most common tropes. His girls looked bohemian, but in a way that was more serious and grounded than the glittery, jet-setter interpretation we usually see of that theme. And his metallics, specifically his heavy use of gold, looked smart and substantive rather than frivolous. And those ruffles, they snaked their way up the torso, rather than around the hemline the way we’ve come to expect. It was almost as if he were giving a certain kind of woman permission to embrace those decorative elements that she might ordinarily reject. It was a stellar start to the week.
