Dries Van Noten Mens F/W 11.12 Paris

[Inaya]

poetic, intricate and well-edited at the same time; Dries is always amazing but he's really nailed it here.

 

[Fiercification]

Dries is so consistent...it kills me. I hate fur but the way those jackets are edited; I would pull out serious cash for those!

 

[whatkatjadid]

This is fantastic. I would wear just about every piece there. Amazingly elegant.

 

[Donatello89]

great colors

 

[eugenius]

One of these days, I'll revive old threads w/ actual images.

Anyways, this is the Dries I wish we'd see more of these days. Everything here looks incredibly slick, mature, and polished. I can't imagine any of his customers would get tired easily in these pieces. This reminds me of what the Raf Simons "boy" from the early 2000s would've matured into as a man. I love the cut of the trousers, too: slim, but not skinny-jean territory, and loose, but not baggy in the 90s-raver way. And look...no crazy kaleidoscope of prints, colors, and embroidery.

I remember seeing that sweater at Barneys, and the price wasn't bad (well, in the grand scheme of expensive designer clothes). If I remember, it was around $7-800 but in comparison to other designers, that same sweater would've easily been over 1K.

Cool, calm, and collected all around.

 

[Phuel]

Slick, mature, polished and cool, calm and collected. We're not in this era anymore, eugenius...

 

[eugenius]

Nope, we are not. And it's unlikely we ever will be anytime soon.

These were clothes that said simply "Notice me."

Now, it's all "Stare at me!"

Stare, gawk, pose, point, click, and post..and repeat, ad infinitum.

 

[Salvatore]

This is the Dries Van Noten era I loved and purchased from. Like you said, these are clothes that say « notice me » in such an authentic and oddly commanding way. I have a coat from a collection around this time that I always get compliments on and asking where it’s from. I wish he’d go back in this direction !

 

[Fulton St Critique]

The way I see it, Dries’s menswear today consists of “core” items that rely of prints and abstraction to attempt to distinguish them as “fashion” selections.

Here, these goods are most certainly “fashion”. Each outerwear piece includes some measure of elevated design that entices you to want to wear them.

I was in Nordstroms on 57th the other day and I can tell you Dries’s menswear was all merch, no fashion. I believe it was the SS21 collection he shot using Antwerp’s streets as the backround. One of my favorite pieces of that collection- despite its horrible reviews- was a short sleeve button down or tee with an image “tapped” up using an iron-on fabric tape as to resemble duct tape. I found it cool, intriguing, and even slightly fashionable. Very DIY which I enjoy. Rather than go ahead of produce the piece- cost saving metrics were obviously used- the final product on sale was a white t-shirt with a screenprinted graphic of an image with tape “holding it” up. So sad and just another sign of the fashion times we are living in.

 

[eugenius]

In a previous life, that piece of tape "holding it" up would've been embroidered.

Speaking of embroidery....

(src: crash magazine)

 

[Phuel]

Dries clearly has left the building since this rebranding. All the effortless, multicultural, artisanal elements that pair elegantly with a modern utilitarian sensibility are gone; all the easygoing, romantic, gentlemanly signatures are gone; and all the relaxed, confident sensuality is gone.

The only signs of past Dries are in the archival component: The pajamas-inspired prints of the suits; the vintage-y blazers; the camel colorway; and the structured footwear. I’d rather search out older pieces from the real Dries, frankly. But at least the foundation of this brand haven't been swept away completely. (If some generous soul were to take me shopping at Dries, I’d easily walk away with a few suits and a few pairs of boots. Unfortunate that those fab coats that can be worn until the end of time and never lose their charm and presence aren’t anywhere to be seen in this rebranded Dries anymore. Because only the real Dries can design such easygoing, effortless dramatics.)

 

[LadyJunon]

Dries clearly has left the building since this rebranding. All the effortless, multicultural, artisanal elements that pair elegantly with a modern utilitarian sensibility are gone; all the easygoing, romantic, gentlemanly signatures are gone; and all the relaxed, confident sensuality is gone.

The only signs of past Dries are in the archival component: The pajamas-inspired prints of the suits; the vintage-y blazers; the camel colorway; and the structured footwear. I’d rather search out older pieces from the real Dries, frankly. But at least the foundation of this brand haven't been swept away completely. (If some generous soul were to take me shopping at Dries, I’d easily walk away with a few suits and a few pairs of boots. Unfortunate that those fab coats that can be worn until the end of time and never lose their charm and presence aren’t anywhere to be seen in this rebranded Dries anymore. Because only the real Dries can design such easygoing, effortless dramatics.)

At what point would you consider the switch between "old Dries" and "new Dries" happened?

 

[Phuel]

^^^ “New” Dries is being too generous to the creative-massacre at this brand. Department store diffusion-line would be more accurate. And this deadening of the brand became fully realized at about the time when that Axel Keller person took over management in 2019. It’s when those obnoxious faux-artsy lookbooks replaced the simple allure of the shows; annoying cast of dead-in-the-eye indie children replaced the classic beauty of the women's and men’s casting; and the push for on-trend, gender-fluid shapeless stuff overwhelming the romantic, sartorial designs of the gentlemanly (and gentlewomanly) traveller sensibility.

 

[bc collector]

And this deadening of the brand became fully realized at about the time when that Axel Keller person took over management in 2019

To be fair, Alex Keller was nominated CEO barely last december, so the person you are probably talking about is Matteo De Rosa, who was the first CEO nominated by Puig to run the new course of the brand.
I do not know what to think, really: on the one hand, it is patent that the brand output has become - eerhm - luckluster (to be kind) over the last few seasons; but in general the struggle to be competitive as an independent in a world dominated by big conglomerates had become so hard that probably Dries felt it best for the future of the company to sell to a group that, at least on paper, had a certain sensibility for niche brands.
Many of us were suspicious from the start and those suspicions have turned out to be justified over time. For someone used to run his own business in total freedom, like Dries, yielding the reins to someone else must not have been easy, and that translated somehow on the creative level. Add to that the operative hardships brought over by the pandemic.

Aside from this, though, I think this thread calls for some general, unanswered questions lurking at the back of many discussions here: are there still customers for these kind of clothes or the market is really only led by logo-obsessed fuccbois and basic b*tches? Is it a reality that mature, more fashion conscious customers do not buy as they used to or is it just a narrative to orient the market in a certain direction? Can a brand like Dries survive in today's market using the old recipes or in order to survive you necessarily have to cater to the moneyed masses and their poor taste?

 

[velvetandsilk]

^^^^^
This embroidery technique is called goldwork.