PARIS - In the end, everyone made it. Despite the Air France strike entering its second week, by the time of the Dries Van Noten show, the first big name on the Paris spring calendar, air fashion was out in force.
Prime Minister Manuel Valls of France may be beating his breast and making noises about the negative impact of the refusenik pilots on the image of the country, but when it comes to the catwalks, the show goes on. One industry teeters on the edge; the other drives determinedly forward.
How to resolve the two?
For his part, Mr. Van Noten took the high road - or the low road - or to be most accurate, what looked like a green road, spotted by seeming clumps of moss and other arid succulents but that turned out to be a carpet hand-tufted by the Buenos Aires-based artist Alexandra Kehayoglou that Mr. Van Noten had commissioned to double as a catwalk.
On it, as bird calls began, strolled clothes of the most leisurely kind - drawstring trousers and tiered silk chiffon tunics and loose T-shirts and bathrobe coats - all in the richest of fabrics, from brightly striped sari silks to brocade sunbursts, jeweled chevrons, men's wear stripes and sapphire Lurex fringe. Pre-Raphaelite met Arts and Crafts, and print was layered on print was layered on print until an entire visual universe had been created from the simplest of starts, and all the familiar shapes took on new shading.
When at the end the models sat down on the carpet like a bevy of picnicking hipster nymphs, it seemed like the best idea of all. It's the rare designer that can make you rethink what you assume you know, or want, but Mr. Van Noten is one.
Presumably this was also the goal of the young designer Yang Li (born in China, raised in Australia, schooled in London), who is making a name for himself with a clever deconstruction of classic tailoring, and who did his best to put a fresh spin on a familiar wardrobe of tricks. 'So destroy the expected' went the message on one top, veiled in silk, and the point was pretty hard to miss.
Knife-edge jackets thus had the sleeves ripped off, the edges left rough, and a stray piece of silk tacked onto one side, left to wave in the breeze. The silk scraps then made a reappearance on dresses and coats, and more logo T-shirts that read 'Bore' or 'Our enemy is dreamless sleep' (or, in case you missed it, 'silk'), the sentiment obscured - just - by another sheer scrim, and paired with long pleated transparent skirts.
Perhaps Mr. Li's point had to do with the decorative value of what is often treated as waste, and the need to re-evaluate what may be dismissed, legitimate issues all. Yet in this case the solution felt a bit flimsy, those scraps more like afterthoughts slipped in to add import as opposed to real meaning.
It did not, quite, take wing.
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