NOTHIN’ BUT NET

How Ancient Egypt’s long lasting aesthetic influence found its way onto Dries Van Noten’s Fall 2016 runway... Using pearls in lieu of faience beads, magnificent lozenge accoutrements covered the models’ slender forms, evoking a modern day Marchesa Luisa Casati, the early-20th-century femme fatale. While Van Noten sought to paint a picture of the morbid affair between the Marchesa Luisa Casati and the poet Gabriele D’Annunzio, he also created his own macabrely glamorous renditions of the ancient Egyptian beadnet shrouds and dresses worn during the early dynasties of the Old Kingdom. The funerary shrouds were used to wrap mummies in preparation for burials while the sheath dresses were believed to be worn in life. A wonderfully detailed example of a Ptolemaic shroud of beadwork resides at the National Museum of Scotland. (fig. 4) The piece came from the chest of a mummy, consisting of a net of black barrel and green tubular beads, complete with designs depicting a bearded face, falcon collar, winged scarab pectoral and the four sons of Horus…

One of the earliest examples of the aforementioned beadnet dress, dating between 2551–2528 B.C., during the rein of Khufu, is located across the pond at The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston… “Depictions of women in Egyptian art occasionally feature garments decorated with an overall lozenge pattern. This design is believed to represent beadwork, which was either sewn onto a linen dress or worked into a separate net worn over the linen. This beadnet dress (fig. 6) is the earliest surviving example of such a garment. It has been painstakingly reassembled from approximately seven thousand beads found in an undisturbed burial of a female contemporary of King Khufu. Although their string had disintegrated, a few beads still lay in their original pattern on and around the mummy, permitting an accurate reconstruction.…” And so, with every string of a bead, the curators gave new life to a relic of the ancient world, just as the spirit of the decadent Marchesa was resurrected through Dries Van Noten’s magical garments… • All Collages by Moi