Dries Van Noten - Designer

[AnaD]

Ugh, this is depressing. Dries is one of my favourite brands, I'd hate to see it go the way of Nina Ricci.

 

[TaylorBinque]

Maybe he's getting ready to retire and prepare for a solid business. The problem is that why Puig!! No fashion brand has came out good under the company. Maybe the perfume will become a viable business but still. I wish it was Richemont instead.

 

[HeatherAnne]

Sad, but honestly I can't even be surprised anymore, high fashion is dead. It's the age we're living in. The buyouts, the rotating casts of head designers, the need to appeal to the masses. The internet has changed everything. There's no loyalty, there's no art, there's nothing distinctive as each house resembles another. Maybe one day it will settle, but I'm not sure I see that happening for awhile.

 

[gius]

Don't the clothes look a bit already like they've turned into something else? Cannot compare to 10 years ago. Even 10 years ago echoed similar sentiments as what he did in the 90s.
(I can't bring myself to hate it either way, just that on the runway it is not the same.)

 

[marcBarna]

They just posted lots of shows in great quality : Dries Van Noten unfortunately there's no music. I wish other brands would do this too.

 

[eugenius]

dodencebt likes this, but eugenius loves this.

 

[Benn98]

Let the drooling commence! Yes, @Nymphaea ...looking at you.
I'll get the mop in the meantime.

Has Dries Van Noten Called on Christian Lacroix?

Rumors are rife in Paris that a project between the two men could be unveiled at the Belgian designer's Paris show.

By Miles Socha on September 25, 2019

TAG TEAM?: Could Dries Van Noten be calling on another master of color and embellishment for his spring 2020 collection, to be paraded in Paris on Wednesday?

Rumors are rife in Paris that the Belgian designer could unveil some sort of project with, or tribute to, Mr. Christian Lacroix, who has pursued a thriving career in stage costumes since his couture house was shuttered in 2009.

The handwritten invitation to Van Noten’s show, while in uppercase block letters, certainly seems to bear the flourish of the designer, according to several people who worked closely with him for decades.

Reached late Tuesday, a spokesman for Van Noten had no comment. Lacroix did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The acclaimed couturier does not own his name. Florida-based duty-free operator Falic Group does, and has built a sizeable business in home, gifts, men’s wear and accessories, and just this week revealed to WWD plans to bring the name back into women’s fashions via collaborations and ultimately, a licensed collection in the advanced contemporary zone.

It comes at a time when exuberant volumes, bold prints and other Lacroix-isms are turning up on European runways.

WWD

 

[perfect blue]

Let the drooling commence! Yes, @Nymphaea ...looking at you.
I'll get the mop in the meantime.

Has Dries Van Noten Called on Christian Lacroix?

Rumors are rife in Paris that a project between the two men could be unveiled at the Belgian designer's Paris show.

By Miles Socha on September 25, 2019

TAG TEAM?: Could Dries Van Noten be calling on another master of color and embellishment for his spring 2020 collection, to be paraded in Paris on Wednesday?

Rumors are rife in Paris that the Belgian designer could unveil some sort of project with, or tribute to, Mr. Christian Lacroix, who has pursued a thriving career in stage costumes since his couture house was shuttered in 2009.

The handwritten invitation to Van Noten’s show, while in uppercase block letters, certainly seems to bear the flourish of the designer, according to several people who worked closely with him for decades.

Reached late Tuesday, a spokesman for Van Noten had no comment. Lacroix did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The acclaimed couturier does not own his name. Florida-based duty-free operator Falic Group does, and has built a sizeable business in home, gifts, men’s wear and accessories, and just this week revealed to WWD plans to bring the name back into women’s fashions via collaborations and ultimately, a licensed collection in the advanced contemporary zone.

It comes at a time when exuberant volumes, bold prints and other Lacroix-isms are turning up on European runways.

WWD

I can dream.

 

[eugenius]

Lunchtime poll: what would you rather see? A Dries Van Noten collection dedicated to Christian Lacroix, or a Dries Van Noten collection dedicated to Christian Dior?

Make Dior Great..ugh, nevermind.

 

[Lola701]

Lunchtime poll: what would you rather see? A Dries Van Noten collection dedicated to Christian Lacroix, or a Dries Van Noten collection dedicated to Christian Dior?

Make Dior Great..ugh, nevermind.

Dries/Lacroix only because I know he will challenge his taste and mine.

I know he will do Dior well as he does 50’s fashion so well... Fall 2010 is one of my favorite collection from Dries.

 

[fashionista-ta]

Lunchtime poll: what would you rather see? A Dries Van Noten collection dedicated to Christian Lacroix, or a Dries Van Noten collection dedicated to Christian Dior?

Make Dior Great..ugh, nevermind.

I cannot get past Lacroix's name being owned by the Falic Group, so I have no idea what you just said.

 

[eugenius]

Falic Group? I thought that was the name of a weird clip I found on the mister's laptop.

I wouldn't mind seeing his take on the New Look and other classic Dior shapes. Undoubtedly, it'd be a gazillion times better than what the other Dior designers in recent years have put out.

In other news, I notice Dries hasn't "travelled" to foreign lands in his collections for a while . Now that cultural appropriation is alive and well, I wonder if somebody on his team told him "Yeah, don't do Hawaii, or China, or Senegal, or India...and No to Georgia."

 

[Benn98]

Falic Group? I thought that was the name of a weird clip I found on the mister's laptop.

Late tot he party, but I'd like to see him stumble with the embellishments and pouffes of Lacroix. Dior would be too easy for him so it would naturally be a success.

Anyway, moving on.....

Bridget Foley’s Diary: High-Chic Team Work

Dries Van Noten recruited Christian Lacroix to work on his spring collection. Here, they discuss their mutual, masterful creative moment.

By Bridget Foley on September 26, 2019

Dries Van Noten and Christian Lacroix

Kudos to all you Dries-loving retailers out there: You know how to keep a secret (at least when there’s an NDA involved).

Every retailer that carries the Dries Van Noten collection made its spring buy before the show. They got the full story of the designer’s stealthy Christian Lacroix subterfuge in the showroom and, like the faithful partners they are, left it there.

As for journalists, Van Noten offered no such insider intel. He even decided against the traditional post-show meet-and-greet, instead inviting us to his Paris headquarters on Thursday to chat with him and Lacroix. The two men held court like old friends, conversing easily, even though at the start of the project, they’d barely known each other.

First point of conversation: the why and the how. “I never understood how you got my e-mail,” Lacroix queried. “Through a person. If you want to get something, you get it,” came Van Noten’s deadpan reply.

Such spirited repartee reflected the joyfulness of the collection — a joy Van Noten determined to capture well before he pressed “send” on his e-mail to Lacroix. “Fashion for me has to be a reflection of what’s happening in the world,” he said. “The world for the moment is not a very beautiful place. I didn’t want to make a grim, sad collection so we started to talk about escapism. Escapism can be like an ostrich putting your head in the soil. It can be also be an entity to make you stronger.”

He started looking at various references, “new romantic, post-punk, historical costumes, Adam Ant with the white mask, all those things. So you look to the Eighties, Nineties couture. Bad things were happening to the world, and Christian was there with meters of ruffles and toreadors. So we said maybe that would be a good thing.” So good that in preparing his mood boards, he saw a preponderance of Lacroix and the idea took hold: Contact the guy.

Lacroix was deeply touched by Van Noten’s interest. “Without knowing each other personally, I know his work very well and I was very curious,” he said. “I already admired his freedom.”

Yet flattered and intrigued though he was, Lacroix didn’t say yes immediately. Now it was his turn to reach out — to his astrologist. “She said, ‘Oh it’s wonderful conjunctions for you. It’s something limitless, also, enlightening!’” he recounted, relishing the memory. Given that astral seal of approval, Lacroix accepted Van Noten’s offer, though he said he would likely have accepted, “I think even without the planets.”

We’ll never know. We do know that magic was made. But first, the designers had to get together. They met at the Champs-Élysées offices of Puig, which purchased Van Noten’s business last year, shortly after one of the “gilets jaunes” protests. All of the windows had been smashed.

“It was really kind of a war zone when we had to talk about ruffles and beauty and colors and fabrics,” Van Noten said. Yet it didn’t feel at all inappropriate to him, rather, the contrary. “It was a context. I didn’t feel ridiculous, like, ‘Oh look at us sitting here now, just after all those horrible things happened and we talk now about beauty.’ No. For me it made perfect sense. It convinced me even more [of the importance], the joy of creating, to have fun and enjoy beauty, fashion, all those things, even to enjoy luxury. Because for the moment, everything has to have a reason, everything has to be political. We’ve lost a little bit the joy.”

The meeting proved divine and the project, a go. “I was sure we’d have some territories in common and an alchemy, a chemistry together,” noted Lacroix.

Certainly Lacroix and Van Noten love color and ornamentation, even if they’ve have steered that shared affinity down very different paths: Lacroix, one of exuberant, historically informed fantasy, and Van Noten, of sophisticated reality. Given the designers’ mutual respect and enthusiasm, the two roads were destined to converge at a place of creative wonder. But what if they just didn’t get along? Did they consider the possibility of short-term workplace disaster?

Short answer, no, although Lacroix admits to some trepidation. “Sometimes I had in mind, I didn’t want to be responsible or the cause of a catastrophe in his career, I swear,” he said. “I felt very, very [honored]. I said, it’s very kind; It’s a good idea, but am I able [to contribute]? But yes, there was such a sense of the balance… And we avoided the catastrophe.” As for being the studio newcomer (Lacroix worked both in Antwerp and digitally), he said the design team welcomed him with open arms and minds.

Van Noten maintained never to have doubted his own brilliant idea, as Lacroix pushed him and his team out of their communal comfort zone. Though young, some on his design staff came from larger, more regimented fashion houses. “Even with all the freedom I have, we became kind of conditioned,” Van Noten said, noting that they sometimes start the design process by running down a check list: “relevance, price, commerciality, product, all those things which have become so important.” In Lacroix’s presence, all of that went out the window. “We forgot all the words,” Van Noten offered. “‘Is it relevant? Is it modern? Is it cool?’ All those things didn’t matter anymore.”

What did matter was starting from a base of white tank top and jeans (often the jeans didn’t make the runway cut) and asking monumental creative questions: “’Should we do polka dots?’ ‘Yes, let’s do polka dots.’ ‘Shall we do polka dot ruffles?’ ‘Why not?’ ‘Fifty meters of ruffles in a skirt?’ Normally we’d say you can’t do this, it’s not cool, it’s not modern, it’s not for this time…Here, we started to put layers on…Having the creative freedom, thanks to him. Maybe it’s a different beauty but why not?”

Together the two designers created a breathtaking show, a tour de force of which its creators should be proud and which, for anyone who loves fashion, is one to revel in. But in working with Lacroix, Van Noten found himself grappling with questions of significance for the larger industry. First, he didn’t want to call their work together a collaboration because of the hyper-commercial connotation that word now carries, “about pushing merch,” he said.

Second, he started questioning the concept of sharply defined brand identity as one of fashion’s holiest grails. I think it’s a thing,” he said. “You have to behave towards expectations from buyers and press. But sometimes a creative person wants to step outside his territory. After more that 30 years creating fashion, I need the creative stimulants to be able to go wherever I want to go.”

Lacroix provided the elixir. Said Van Noten, “It was liberating when Christian was around.”

WWD

 

[Lola701]

I hope their collaboration continue with FW and menswear.

 

[perfect blue]

Such a great story.

 

[Salvatore]

I totally enjoyed reading that article. It was extremely enlightening, insightful, and exciting to read. Thank you for posting !

 

[Salvatore]

What a fun video ! I love watching Christian and Dries interact. Also, completely off topic, but Dries is really looking sexy lately
Dries Van Noten - Special - 2019 Women S/S 2020 QA CL

 

[perfect blue]

What a fun video ! I love watching Christian and Dries interact. Also, completely off topic, but Dries is really looking sexy lately
Dries Van Noten - Special - 2019 Women S/S 2020 QA CL

Thanks, I’m gonna check this out.

 

[LadyJunon]

Dries Van Noten on the future of his brand under Puig:

Dries Van Noten: A Fashion Storyteller Plots A Future Beyond Clothes

With new product categories and retail experiences, the Belgian designer has recast himself as a fashion storyteller. Ahead of his Paris men’s show, Van Noten discusses the past, present and future of the Dries Van Noten brand with Laurence Benaïm.

By LAURENCE BENAÏM
18 January 2024

BoF PROFESSIONAL

ANTWERP - Dries Van Noten seems to have adopted Churchill’s motto to ‘never waste a good crisis”: In the midst of the so-called retail apocalypse hastened by the pandemic, the Belgian designer known for his deft tailoring and extravagant palette of colours and materials has pushed his namesake business to the next level: rolling out lipsticks and niche perfumes, opening 6 additional stores, launching an e-commerce site across 32 countries, and expanding his wholesale footprint to around 600 points of sale worldwide.

In Los Angeles, a former jewellery factory and neighbouring mid-century bungalow were converted into a 790 square-metre flagship store in 2020 — his largest-ever boutique and the first freestanding location on American soil.

The moves have paid off as American demand for luxury fashion surged, while niche fragrances enjoyed unprecedented momentum worldwide.

“We were a big little company. Now we are becoming a small, big company,” Van Noten said of the effort to expand to new categories and to reinforce the label’s structure since being acquired by Spanish perfume giant Puig in 2018.

While Van Noten is his family’s third generation of fashion entrepreneurs — his grandparents were tailors; his parents ran a clothing store — Puig has encouraged the creator to reassert his identity as more than a clothier, but as a storyteller in the broader sense, whose tales can drive sales in new product categories like beauty.

In Paris, a boutique inaugurated last July on the Quai Malaquais facing the Louvre is a 21st century cabinet of curiosities: a gold-and-marble space in a former antique gallery displays his new lines of lipstick (marketed as gender-fluid) and high-end perfumes whose precious-looking bottles combine materials like porcelain and cobalt glass.

Van Noten met with The Business of Fashion back in his native Antwerp, where his studio and company are still based and where he’s taken to cultivating a vast garden at his home in the nearby village of Lier. A sixty-five-year-old young man with the look of a seminarian, Van Noten says he enjoys looking on at the world’s fashion capitals from a distance.

Devotees come to him: every season in January and July, Dries Van Noten-addicted shoppers flock to stores to gain access to the season’s most directional, limited pieces before the collection is delivered more broadly. They belong to a sort of ultra-recognisable club of shoppers brave enough to adopt the label’s near-unmanageable clash of colour and prints, rendered sublime by disciplined silhouettes.

Van Noten spoke ahead of his menswear show on Thursday in Paris as well as the release of a new perfume in March: Mystic Moss, an “impossible” combination of salt and mandarin, will be the eleventh opus of the unisex olfactory line the brand launched in 2022. A vegetable, mineral shock, the perfume recalls all the opposites that Dries Van Noten likes to combine: pink and pepper, brocade and neon, classics subverted each season by a free and polychrome spirit.

More than ever, the Van Noten universe remains electrified in recent seasons by a vitalising “why not?”

LB: How has business evolved since the Puig acquisition? What changes were you able to make following their investment?

DVN: Since Puig became part of our business, we could really grow the way we wanted to, which was the goal. We added e-commerce, we now have shops in China and all kinds of other things. Obviously it’s been a new chapter for the brand.

You’ll show your menswear collection in Paris on Thursday. How do you see the menswear business evolving?

Menswear is changing a lot right now; it’s really exciting. I’ve always worked in a rather gender-fluid way. For me “men’s fashion, women’s fashion” doesn’t really make a difference. But now you really feel that there are women shopping the men’s, men shopping the women’s. So you have that full interaction. And of course it creates possibilities: using different fabrics, different shapes.

Doesn’t that cross-over make having a separate menswear show feel less relevant? You don’t seem to care for the co-ed format.

I think it’s still really important to give the men’s collection this attention as well. I’m always a bit afraid that if you do a co-ed show, the men end up looking like an accessory to the women. So for me, the men’s show is really a different forum, a different atmosphere, where we can really focus on what we want to say about menswear.

You started with a men’s collection in Antwerp in 1986, and opened your first store three years later. What drives you in your work — and how has that changed over the years?

What pushes me to create is beauty. For this there are no instructions, no diktats to respect. For almost forty years I have been trying to establish a vocabulary. Then it’s the people who wear the clothes who make it their own, who write the sentences.

It starts each time with words and images that become silhouettes. But in the end it’s the fabric which really dictates everything — the material determines the shapes.

It’s about renewing yourself by daring. It’s using fuzzy fabrics for structured shapes. Imagining men’s suits in silk georgette or a t-shirt coat. Or an overcoat in masculine broadcloth whose waist is accented with gold hand painting. I want to have fun. This does not mean that I want to shock. The most important thing is to surprise myself, to challenge my team.

You grew up around fashion. How has your family background influenced your career?

My grandparents were tailors, but I wasn’t in contact with them. Then my parents opened a shop, while my older brother and sister were in college. Rather than being alone in an empty house I started doing my homework at the store.

I started accompanying my parents to Paris and Milan to buy collections. Very young I was in contact with manufacturers. My father thought I was going to take over the business, but I was a rebel. I wanted to become a fashion designer.

I kept this conviction: to survive, you have to grow, but not at any pace or at any cost.

So you went to the Royal Academy — where you became part of the famous Antwerp Six collective. What are some of your memories from that time?

Martin [Margiela] and Walter [Von Beirendonck] opened my eyes. We were a bit like fashion aliens, coming from a country that had no tradition of fashion and avant-garde. Our names were so difficult to pronounce that we even thought about changing them. With Ann [Demeulemeester] and Walter, we were always jealous of Marina [Yeah] and Martin, whose names we thought were a catchier.

We had no means, no history. So our only option was to do things differently. We moved forward very slowly, taking small steps. For a living and to finance my company, I would design collections of childrenswear, or sportswear for [tennis brand] Donnay. Little by little my brand became profitable, and I was able to stop these collaborations.

We all felt that creating a beautiful collection was more important than going fast, than opening boutiques all over the world. I kept this conviction: to survive, you have to grow, but not at any pace or at any cost.

However, you’ve certainly increased the pace of expansion since selling the majority of the company’s shares in 2018 to Puig. Has the vision is changed?

We were looking for a partner. I had just celebrated my 60th birthday and I wanted to think about the future, to create a future for the brand. We were a big little company. Now we are becoming a small big company: with the development of e-commerce, the extension of the accessories line and store openings in China. In such a saturated market, our ambition is to do something meaningful, something different and sustainable.

With Puig we decided that fashion and perfumes should speak together within the same house. There are no ambassadors or advertising, rather a vision based on feminine and masculine contrasts, punk and couture.

We took over a gallery on Quai Malaquais as a test boutique, a prelude to everything that will follow. It’s where we will launch a new fragrance, Mystic Moss, in March, then work on expanding the beauty line into new categories in 2025.

Our beauty collection is constantly evolving. In addition to the new eau de cologne, we’re adding new shades of lipstick and accessories like refillable cases, where I have had a lot of fun coming up with new combinations of prints.

How would you describe the new eau de toilette “Mystic Moss” ?

For Mystic Moss, the idea was to create an eau de toilette to match our eau de parfum Cannabis Patchouli, which in itself is a very intriguing scent. We wanted it to be the more fresh version of it. The nose Nicolas Bonneville used an unexpected pairing of salt and mandarin, with ingredients like cardamom, algae and vetiver to make something really fresh but also quite specific.

Do you have any recipe for success?

Not any recipe, but rather a conviction: not to repeat yourself. Wearing plain clothing with a logo is not necessary. A label inside is enough. When you see the trick, you lose the magic.

Why have you always chosen to remain in Antwerp?

It is always interesting to have a certain distance, to see what is happening. I love Paris, New York, but here is where I can concentrate. Silence is like sight. I need perspectives.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Source: BoF

 

[nonfatgoddess]

Dries Van Noten on the future of his brand under Puig:

Source: BoF

Dries has been and will always be such an inspiration! So glad he didn’t lose himself when he sold a majority stake to Puig. I’m excited for his ventures in beauty! I hope it’ll be a success. Thanks for sharing @LadyJunon x