Fashion brand DRIES VAN NOTEN presented their Spring Summer 2023 Menswear Collection, that celebrates unusual elegance, on Thursday June 23rd, during the ongoing Paris Fashion Week. The collection plays with contrast between the need for protection, and the need for intimacy, and it fuses softness and solidity. It explores and reimagines different archetypes of man such as after-dark dandy, cowboy, garage scene grifter, and sleepy daydreamer. The designer also found inspiration in the Zazou subculture of Paris during World War II, the avant garde 80s fashion world, particularly the Buffalo style movement, and in an underground GlamGarage movement.
SPRING SUMMER 2023 MENSWEAR COLLECTIONS
“Lettering is significant and powerful. No obvious signage, but discreet messages woven subliminally into the story. The letters of Dries Van Noten are fragmented into fabric, a disruption of branding. In a world of digital white noise, the Lorem Ipsum text – broken Latin wording used by graphic designers as a placeholder – is employed across trousers and patches of fabric. An archaic language left open to interpretation, given purpose.
The masculine tendencies of the cowboy feature in the Western-style shirting, boots and shoes. Suit shapes are rigorous. A new silhouette of blazer evolves; cropped, zipped and tight on the body. An exacting jacket with exacting square shoulders worn with flowing trousers in an excess of fabric; preciseness in the former, abandon in the latter. Balanced with suiting are expressions of couture; the voluminous plume on a rolled shoulder, the dramatic silhouette on a parka, cape sleeves. Patchwork is employed in myriad forms, roughly cut up and spliced together.” – from Dries Van Noten