Dries Van Noten Wants You to Play With Your Clothes

“Visceral, louche, feral, fly”: those are the words that Dries Van Noten used to describe his Fall 2020 collection, a sexy, tactile proposal of glamour, with furs slung over shoulders, decadent velvets, and relaxed silks.

“He really likes to play with clothes,” Van Noten said of this season’s guy in an interview. “He is not afraid of certain theatrical effects. He really wants to use his sexual power, and he wants, really, to enjoy that kind of playful decadence.”

The idea, the Belgian designer explained, was to “very clearly” show the power of artifice: his models, after all, were draped in fake fur and costume jewels. The result was a paean to performative dressing, blending the attitude of the New York Dolls with a more old world kind of peacocking, a truly dandified vibe. “One big game of dressing and playing with clothes,” Van Noten said. See you in the fashion sandbox.