Last year, Dries Van Noten came across a young English photographer named James Reeve while he was president of the jury at the fashion festival in Hyères. A year later, his Spring/Summer 2012 has been decorated with the photographer’s night-scape prints after they collaborated with each other in Antwerp. Because the photos weren’t meant for attire purposes, Dries combined the prints with haute couture silhouettes from the 1950s. In turn, every pixel came alive.
While prints have found their way into almost all Spring/Summer 2012 shows, the result of this collaboration was incomparable. In one look, Dries even decorated one skirt with actual stones to mirror the lights in Reeve’s photo of a building in Marseille. It is so wonderful to see aesthetic passion lit up in van Noten’s academic flair. Ready-to-wear, with all the delicacies of couture.
(Also: Look at Americas Next Top Model cast off, Fatima Siad, working the runway above! The 24-year-old is the first castoff to land veritable high-fashion runway work!)
