Dries van Noten: This Fashion Show Felt Like Heaven
October 07, 2004 - Paris
Now that’s what we call real class, with a clever, cerebral and cultivated capital C.
To celebrate his 50th fashion show designer, Dries von Noten staged a magnificent display of munificence, a dinner for 300 in a giant disused factor, where one 150 yard long table, over which hung more than 100 crystal chandeliers turned into a dazzling runway for dessert.
“I always had this fantasy of having a really good dinner party with a whole bunch of friends where beautiful girls suddenly appear and walk all over the table in a fashion show. Tonight we did it!” a quietly happy Van Noten told FWD.
The designer hired Etienne Russo to organize the soiree and the party meister responded with a brilliant display. Each guest had their own waiter, which made for wonderful image, worthy of Von Stroheim or Welles, of an endless double line of servers advancing in formation through the enormous, rusty machinery infested Babock & Wilcox plant, located in an industrial quarter of north Paris.
And, hang it all, the food was excellent. Supplied by the Brussels caterers Loriers, the main course of white fish and steamed vegetables served in a paper would have put a smile on the faces of Lucullus or Escoffier. Nor did Dries skimp on the wine, like the Bastide rouge that brought a smile to the lips. Our host even served the phalanx of some 100 photographers’ excellent fare. No wonder they sang through the show.
Right after the main course, the chandeliers were winched up and the show began. For spring 2005, Dries showed superbly artily tie-dyed dresses or superbly cut suede jackets cut out in delicate lace patterns. Von Noten has always been an inventive tailor and his new double breasted, twelve button jackets that were the epitome of stylish cutting.
Post-show an enormously long shelf descended on which were perched signed copies of book celebrating his runway half-century. Turned out my Dries connection began with his fifth show, staged in 1994 in Passage Brady, a wonderfully eccentric passage full of Indian stores and restaurants. In appreciation of the understanding the local traders showed to having their street taken over by fashionistas, Dries provided fake money for us all to spend in the passage. I ended up getting my hair cut in a Bombay-born barber.
You have got to hand it to Dries van Noten. He’s his own man, the greatest example of commercial and artistic success existing outside of the London, Milan, New York and Paris celebrity driven culture. Let’s hear it for him.