PARIS, February 28, 2000 – Beneath a floating ceiling solid with lightbulbs--4,300 in all--Dries Van Noten sent out a sweet and whimsical collection where the message was in the mix.

Van Noten worked with the season's ladylike theme but translated it through the eyes of a madcap English milady. Her charming, haphazard vision revolved around unexpected juxtapositions--a tweedy coat worn over poison-green flapper dresses (beaded with blossom-shaped sequins); a mustard funnel-neck sweater, thick enough for a British winter, with a horizontally paneled emerald velvet skirt.

Van Noten cited the influence of the Bloomsbury Group of artists and writers in 1920s London, and, indeed, their off-key color sense and devil-may-care attitude to clothes saturated this artsy collection. Even when Van Noten showed an outfit as unembellished as a ribbed black polo neck with wide "Oxford Bag" pants, he wrapped an ivory hand-knit scarf around it--and embroidered the trailing ends with a crusting of amethyst beads. There was a '50s feel, too, in the nubbly wool coats with thick fur collars, and the buoyant gored skirts in brightly colored silk stripes or fruity velvet--a lighter reworking of Van Noten's Spanish gypsy crinolines of last season.

– By Hamish Bowles