Dries Van Noten’s "Edgy Departure"

Autumn/Winter 2010 Collection

Van Noten has always been a bold designer when it comes to color, and this season was no exception. But where before he concentrated on reinventing ethnic prints, this season he went hyper abstract with a great series of white dress shirts, featuring blobs, stains and smears of inky backs, bloods and blues in a new dandy expressionism.

Smartly, the tailored looks were a tad more reigned in, with a series of sleek linen mix herring bone coats that had great style or arty collarless jerkins and lab coats with curvy leather patches. One imagines that high-street brands worldwide will soon be aping – unfairly - the latter looks, underlining the reach of this Belgium designer.

Van Noten played down suggestions that he had taken a really radical departure.

“I’m always looking for elegance, but using new techniques; and this time with a rawer edge. But it’s still very much me,” Van Noten said.