Van Noten, who is 46, says he underwent a radical shift in his own thinking about four years ago. After leading one of the biggest revolts in fashion history, as a member of the so-called Antwerp Six, Van Noten felt he was being frog-marched by magazine editors and stylists, who used their power to promote a claque of names and looks. ''There was a period when it was quite difficult to survive as a designer,'' Van Noten tells me. ''The worry was, 'I must be fashionable.''' The truth is that for all the talk about globalism, the fashion world has shrunk to the size of a walnut, and the walnut is named LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton (or Gucci Group; take your pick). The big luxury companies may create buzz for the rest of the industry, but ultimately they're looking for a consensus.
Rather than play along, Van Noten decided to pass. ''Now my biggest concern is what I make -- do I like it, and are people going to want to have it,'' he says. ''I don't really worry if it's good for the young girl or the older woman. I just try to make something really beautiful.'' He adds: ''Are all the hip stylists going to like it, yes or no? I don't care anymore.''
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Van Noten, who worked at his father's haberdashery as a teenager -- his dad now runs the Association of Open Gardens of Flanders -- isn't nostalgic for the years when he and Martin Margiela and the rest of the Antwerp Six were so hard up that they had to travel to a Florence fashion fair in a pair of campers. But he sometimes misses the creativity that such limitations afford. He recalls a teacher he had at the Royal Academy, a Madame Prigot. ''She thought knees were the ugliest part of the body, that women with long hair were sluts and that Coco Chanel was a genius,'' he says. ''We had to be very creative to work within her restrictions.'' Which may be why Van Noten isn't itching to do a perfume or something equally grown up. This month he will open a store in Hong Kong with the retailers Joyce and Adrienne Ma -- his elegant flagship remains in Antwerp -- and in November he will release a limited-edition book to mark his 50th collection. But beyond that, he has no plans. ''The business is large enough so that we can live very well from it, and still a size that we can control and have fun with,'' he says.
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Paolo Roversi 
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