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One of Dries Van Noten’s greatest gifts is his ability to act like a biannual light-bulb moment for the men of the world. Dries shares your taste before you knew you had it. Few designers would be met with the approving glares that were the case for Van Noten on Thursday evening in Paris, when he paired a jacket and shirt in two different checks of blues and greens with a camouflage trouser, in what should have been an impossible constellation but felt as harmonious as could be. “I really wanted to take camouflage out of its war and army contexts. That’s why these prints look more like flowers than camouflage,” Dries told i-D online backstage. He was more than ordinarily cheerful, and it was a state of mind felt throughout the highly elegant collection. “It’s going well. I’m very happy,” he said, noting that it had been a “fun” collection to do. The soundtrack featuring Snoop Dogg’s ‘Drop It Like It’s Hot’ certainly did little to quench the message of positivity elevated by said floralised camouflage as well as bright white fencing jackets, which did their equal part to take any aggressive associations out of the perspective. And so, in about ten minutes and fifty-two exits, Dries Van Noten completely re-appropriated two of the most fundamental symbols of war in society, and turned them into the most coveted elements of our SS13 wardrobes, all at once. You could say he dropped it like it was hot.
Text: Anders Christian Madsen
Photography: Mitchell Sams
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