Dries Van Noten's Spring-Summer 2012 collection had him looking like a prophet. Almost everything was waterproof. He combined some of the season's key trends today as a dark palette. Midnight blue and burgundy were the dominant tones, shot through with industrial brights. The starkness of that contrast played out in the various tensions established by the collection: structure vs softness, real vs synthetic, tradition vs technology. The clothes gleamed. In one case—silk coveralls layered with a nylon parka and a wool-polyester jacket—there were three different shines. Same with a yellow parka, plastic inside, nylon on the outside, and decorated by the black bonding tape that would normally have been inside.
