Eight years into his time at Dries Van Noten, and now with four collections under his belt as creative director, Julian Klausner is still embracing learning. This season’s menswear dissertation encompassed a broad curriculum of core house disciplines—color, pattern, patchwork—with a particular emphasis on knitwear. “It’s been a moment since we had a strong knit message in the show,” he said backstage. “We have a wonderful knit team, some who have been there for 30 years. They’ve actually done almost all the Dries knits. And for me, it’s a huge honor to have their experience and also their view.”
The collection’s imagined characters were a new cohort of freshmen. Said Klausner: “It’s the idea of coming of age, growing up from being a teenager, exploring the world, leaving the home, taking the things you love with you, hand-me-downs, your granddad’s coats, your childhood blazer.” That notion of masculine identities still not quite formed freed the designer to experiment with spontaneity, proportion, play, and even clumsiness.
Klausner’s cohort had apparently been traveling between leaving home and heading to campus. Many wore single-piece hats that apparently layered Nordic-pattern beanies over chullos. Patterned knit collar pieces encircled the neckline on narrowly cut “pencil coats” and generous cloaks that contributed to a vaguely late-Victorian, dreaming-spires atmosphere, further supported by collegiate crest embroideries on the shirting, ties, and end-section suiting and cloaks.
Rib-knit striped cardigans with gently structured shoulders were bibbed with geometrically patterned knit panels or expanded panels whose relief was sometimes glitched. These were zipped at each side, either entirely removable or openable at the left or right. Shrunken knit tank tops were layered under crested shirting or jersey tank tops, and were some of the many garments placed over a cropped adaptation of Klausner’s last-season sarongs. These were designed to resemble the tails and hems of a shirt, but were in fact belted around the waist like a skirt. “I’ll let you baptize them,” said Klausner when asked for a name: shkirt? There was also a clan of kilts cut in tailoring wools, sometimes worn over pants, sometimes worn bare-legged. “Dries did a lot of shows with kilts in the early 2000s and it’s always something that I really love for the guys,” said Klausner.
Almost-clerical capelets were draped like mantles over the shoulder on shirting and coats. A knit tank top was arranged in a trompe l’oeil to resemble a deeply round-neck tan worn over a zip-up polo. Late in the collection, knit was applied to outerwear as embroidered yarn and bead fair isle patterns that arced across the chest and shoulder at the same position as the capelets. One recurring geometric knit pattern was printed onto an overdyed corduroy overcoat.
Summa cum laude for this observer were the color-drenched and pattern-dense outerwear pieces. Hooded overcoats were printed with Polaroid florals. An olive tonal floral jacquard weave parka was layered over a burnt orange quilted weave liner: A++. Look 31’s Polaroid flower-printed satin capelet trench, double overdyed in red and petrol, was A+++, especially against the shirred shirt beneath it.
Overcoats and liner jackets were assembled from an apparent patchwork of contrasting yet complementary panels. A recurring white under-collar detail framed the face without tipping into formality. Another outstanding piece was the paper bag pants shown in multiple pattern clashes, which featured contrasting top sections that played on the eye either as loose shirting or low-slung pants separated from underwear.
“Not really,” Klausner said when asked if any of tonight’s characterization was autobiographical. “It’s more like a fantasized idea. It’s about the steps of self exploration and finding yourself, and I think that’s a really beautiful idea to work with.” The work was beautiful too.
