For Spring/Summer 2020, Dries Van Noten and famed French couturier Christian Lacroix spurred the Paris Fashion Week crowd into a frenzy with their collaborative collection. “The plot was hatched naturally and at the very start of the season,” Van Noten said before the show. “I found myself needing exuberance, opulence, another volume and fun! I was constantly drawn to the Eighties and Nineties, to a love of dressing up, to couture, to beauty, to audacity — to joy.”

There were a few hints of the collaboration before the reveal: guests received invitations with bold-lettered handwriting like that of Lacroix’s, and were then greeted with a single red rose on their seats at the show — a nod to the tradition at Lacroix’s couture shows of tossing a flower on the runway after the finale.

The collection itself combined the best of both worlds with couture-like flourish, opening with a sartorial dialogue that switched between black and white minimalism (nodding to ‘90s Antwerp Six spareness) and print-centric maximalism (channelling Lacroix’s operatic costuming). The harmonised exuberance of the Belgian designer and the French couturier crescendoed with Matador jackets, gold-buttoned army coats, sequinned brocades and gilded embroideries in animal prints and fiery fuchsias and oranges. And for the finale, the two designers emerged with a model in angelic white ruffles and feathers, displaying a heavenly union in fashion history and an epic return to Paris Fashion Week after 10 years for Lacroix.