Photography by Vassilis Karidis
“Gentle” may not be the most fashionable adjective in the intense, often harsh fashion world. Dries Van Noten, though is an exception: he, and his clothes, are most definitely gentle. Cacophony is not his thing. The subtle blend of romanticism, exoticism and eccentricity that exudes from any piece of clothing with his label on it; the cozy atmosphere of his eclectic shops, conceived not as temples but as houses or bazaars; the dreamy air of his shows, which are forays into a parallel dimension of pure, multi sensory joy: all of this comes from someone who expresses himself in whispers rather than shouts. “There is so much of myself as a person in the things I create, it’s almost scary,” he says with a laugh. “Sometimes I feel like I am baring it all in front of the audience.” The serene flow of his speech is accented by a piercing Belgian “r”. When he talks, he looks straight into my eyes. This is the first time I have met the famously reserved Van Noten in person, and it is the man, not the designer, who I hope to get to know.
On my way to the early-morning interview, in Paris’ fourth arrondissement, the sun is shining brightly. I am assembling a mental picture of the Dries universe. I think of it as a place where every tiny detail is at once meticulously calculated and utterly effortless. Once, I did a telephone interview with Van Noten: while on hold, I was graced with not another hysterical jingle but a soothing audio collage of dialogues and vignettes from 1950s French films. Delightful! For Christmas, I was given – as was all the press – a 491-gramme bar of Belgian chocolate, wrapped in red paper, with slogans printed in silver across it. And the correspondence? Hand-written thank-you notes are sent whenever an article is published, and the same elegant font appears on all cards, show invitations and even emails. It indicates not just taste but attention – and attention, after all, is the essence of kindness.
Back to the meeting. Van Noten is dressed in a dark field jacket, blue jumper, white shirt and chinos, his salt-and-pepper hair side-parted to recall the good schoolboy he no doubt was. He looks like a cultured antiquarian, a polite art historian or a particularly elegant gardener, but not a fashionista. He also looks far younger than his 52 years. We are in the industrious, arty lower Marais: 4 rue du Plâtre, a converted gallery space acquired by the company in the mid-1990s that functions as Van Noten’s Parisian base. (The firm’s headquarters are still in Antwerp, where the designer was born and still lives and works.)
“I love living in Antwerp,” Van Noten says. “I make no political statement of my dislike for media exposure, I just don’t like to be public. In this sense, being based in Belgium is an enormous advantage, because I can easily travel everywhere while living in a relatively small city. I like the idea of looking at things from the outside. Taking a step back, especially in fashion, is quite healthy.” Seated on a pea-green sofa, he is incredibly serene, almost detached. “I am not afraid to admit that I am romantic,” he continues. “Very romantic. I like to dream; I like to find beauty and soft things in all that goes on around me.”
Yet there is a core of quiet intensity to his designs that suggests a life lived with passion. “I’m often labelled as a designer who uses exotic references, and travel is certainly a big part of my aesthetic,” he says. “Yet I think that traveling happens truly in your mind: it is a way of thinking, of looking at things. People think that traveling is taking an eight-hour flight to some far-flung destination. For me, it’s taking a car and turning off where you have never gone before, or maybe looking at something you like in a new way. Traveling means opening your eyes.”
One way or another, Van Noten has been involved in the clothing industry all his life. Born in Antwerp in 1958 into the third generation of a family of tailors, he watched his grandfather rework second-hand clothes by turning them inside out, while his father opened a large fashion boutique in the outskirts of Antwerp, and then a second in the city centre, in the 1970s. Dries was educated in a Jesuit school before enrolling on the fashion course at Antwerp’s Royal Academy of Fine Arts, which was then just another small arts college. He graduated in the early 1980s alongside a class of visionaries that included Ann Demeulemeester and Martin Margiela, who changed the course of modern fashion when they came to London in 1986 and, seemingly overnight, sparked a Belgian fashion phenomenon. Van Noten founded his company the same year, and now, 24 years later, he is still the sole owner of what has grown into a small empire.
“We are completely independent,” he says proudly, with a stress on the “we” that suggests a profound appreciation for teamwork and an utter lack of the fashion world’s trademark egomania. “Of course it has its pluses and minuses,” he continues, “but I have the immense pleasure of being my own boss and that is unbeatable. I don’t have a marketing team telling me to do flowers, for instance, because they sell, which is great. At the same time, I must be sure to pay all the salaries to my employees, which means I have to balance creativity with commerce.” Is that hard? “It depends. I am both a creator and an entrepreneur, and I’m fine with it. I like the combination and would never choose to be one or the other.”
Van Noten may be calm and unassuming, but his intense focus and determination make him that rare thing, both dreamer and businessman. “Fashion today is all about the product,” he sighs. “With all the pre-collections and the shows that are just marketing exercises, it has turned into a system. For an old romantic like me, this is hurting a little bit. That’s why I try to do things my way.
“I like to have happy people around me, and it’s for these people that I create my collections. Fashion should never be too dark or too gloomy: it should evoke feelings of joy. I believe in clothes as tools for self-expression. The biggest compliment is if I see someone on the street wearing something I have created in a way I would never have imagined. Clothes should always tell something of the person that wears them – and very little of the designer who made them.”
Van Noten spends an all-consuming amount of time in his studio and works enormously hard on every aspect of his business. But he is not a fashion person: he makes no pompous style declarations, he has no famous friends and he doesn’t even advertise in magazines, for fear of reducing his vision to a formula. “In fashion, it is very easy to see yourself as the god of your own little world, but it’s a far cry from the truth,” he says. “Which is why I have a passion for gardening, and try to spend some time around plants and flowers every day. The garden forces you to be very humble: you’re there with your feet on the ground and your hands in the soil, but flowers will only bloom if they want to, not because you force them to. I might think of myself as an artist, but I don’t. A wonderful chef who makes a wonderful cake deserves the title just as well,” he smiles, finishing the interview as politely as ever.
Although we have talked extensively about Van Noten’s work, we hardly touched on his personal life, yet it was an oddly, deeply intimate exchange. Shy people often have an elegant way of talking about themselves while appearing to talk about anything but themselves. It is between the lines that we dream, and Dries Van Noten knows a thing or two about dreams.
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Originally published in Dapper Dan, Issue 02, September 2010. Styling by Nicholas Georgiou.