After last season‘s collaboration with Christian Lacroix, it was clear that for autumn-winter 2020, Dries Van Noten would somehow continue with this energy. That psychological afterglow is with Van Noten, as he cheerfully admitted backstage of his show: “With Christian it was so liberating to enjoy, to play, to not think too far ahead about product.” He laughed, summing up what he learned from his friend, the French couturier. “If you think you have a lot of fabric and embroidery, then do some more! Just go for it!” Van Noten was thinking about “nocturnal glamour” and particularly the dressed-to-kill creatures of the glam 1970s and high 1980s, whom he glimpsed from afar as a young man in Antwerp, in the form of the high-gloss photography of the makeup artist Serge Lutens. Maybe she was heading for a night at the most trendy club in Paris. Or maybe that was her, wending her way home in daylight, with a plaid coat shrugged over her glitter. “It’s about going out, enjoying life – having fun, that’s very important!” he remarked. “I thought of this party girl. Something mysterious. Something dark. But I questioned how far it could go, while staying contemporary.” His solution was to partially casualize the glamour by applying his melee of acid green and fuchsia jungle prints to fluid pajama shapes, and adding ’90s grunge–influenced plaids and hip-tied shirts to the mix. Equally head-turning: a dress in a violent purple, streaked with silver embroidery. Billie Eilish’ slime-green hair is a sort of 2020 party-look must-have which Dries picked up as well.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.