With New York fashion week fast approaching, we take a last look back at a few noteworthy shows from Paris.

In a move that was bound to be taken as a wry comment on the global economic crisis, Belgian designer Dries Van Noten chose to present his Fall/Winter men’s collection at the high-modernist French Communist Party headquarters, in an undulating underground concourse designed by famed architect Oscar Niemeyer. Van Noten’s younger countryman, Raf Simons, might have more buzz these days, but the collection showed why Van Noten has had such staying power during more than two decades in the industry. Marked by voluminous trousers and stiff, structured fabrics devised by Van Noten himself, the collection mixed rigor and whimsy, nostalgia and modernity, in ways that felt appropriate for these times, without being at the mercy of them.

KEYWORDS: Dries Van Noten, fashion, Paris Menswear Fall/Winter 09/10