One of our Milan men’s constatations was the use of Italian references and inspirations for the collections. After all, not even fashion designers managed to travel much during the pandemic. Same for Dries Van Noten who hasn’t left Belgium too much and stayed in his beloved port city Antwerp, which served as backdrop and stimulus for his latest men’s collection. One of the reasons Van Noten is so revered can be found at Andreas Murkudis store on Postdamer Strasse at the moment. The designer took over an entire section of the store with his Spring/Summer 2021 collections creating a small Van Noten pop up. But as always, everything the designer touches stands out with taste, an attention and love for details, which simply make you gasp. He printed giant posters on the Murkudis ten-meter high old printing plant windows depicting the psychedelic campaign images he created with photographer Vivienne Sassen. Also, there are posters as free take away and even the light fixtures seem to have come from his personal stock. They are in fact from Bocci, a design company from Berlin and Vancouver, which Murkudis added to the mix. It’s simply beautiful, the perfect backdrop to his print heavy design universe. So now he turned to Antwerp, his hometown and that of those other famous five designers. Van Noten moved around a podium to 56 iconic places to shoot the collection.
Dries Van Noten installation at Andreas Murkudis in Berlin shot by Friederike Seifert.
The essence?
To the sounds of the rave shout out Loaded from Primal Scream, Van Noten concocted a lively, positive, full of energy collection with lots of shorts, his mega parkas, punchy colors like lime and orange and bigger volumes.
Color energy
High volume
You know it’s a trend?
The color blocked, multi-stripe silk shirt seems to become the item of the season. Van Noten gives his patterns a slight V shape in neon yellow, brown and pink combined with silk shorts. It’s the evolution from the ubiquitous silk shirt we keep seeing at Gucci, Versace or Casablanca.
The trend shirt
The photo print?
Van Noten has been using graphic photo prints off and on in his oeuvre. This time he focused on the port aspect of Antwerp in silk-screened giant cranes from the loading docks on his outerwear giving a nod to artists like Isa Genzken or Thomas Ruff.
Prints inspired by giant cranes in the docks of Antwerp.
Another comeback?
When a designer of influence like Van Noten revisits camouflage, as heavily in his tailoring, one could fear the return of the military motive as when Valentino men’s did it.
Is camo coming back?
