Set in a carpark with the kind of lighting reminiscent of action film interrogation scenes, the collection began with a menacing look: a sharply tailored coat in sinister black.
Followed by bondage-inflected trousers—triple-belted—and knitwear that sank at the neckline to resemble a spade, the collection seemed to firm its fighting stance. With the ominous build-up of live drum & bass, the anticipation was equal parts Fight Club and nightclub. You just weren’t sure if the show would crescendo to suspense or a point of celebration.
Soon, however, plant-like prints wrapped around everything from shirting to outerwear. Whether you interpreted them as sinewy trees or rivers unfurling across a map, it was as if Van Noten nodded to nature at every turn.
With avian and botanical flourishes on puffers and pants, perhaps the severity we saw earlier illustrated an urgency to march back into the wild once more—a man making a break from the concrete wasteland of a carpark and driving, pedal to metal, into the serenity of a national park.
If only Tyler Durden had walked his appetite for anarchy off, he would have found a taste for beauty again. Particularly, the sheer elegance of Van Noten’s double-breasted greatcoat; a woolen number cinched to accentuate a man’s upper torso and, I don’t doubt, reaffirm one’s self-possession.