At a time when celebrities are creative directors, luxury campaigns confirm Hollywood romances, and heritage pieces are being rehashed at a dizzying clip, Dries Van Noten is a designer who can still create a stir with pure fashion.
“The whole celebrity situation is getting kind of out of control,” he said during a recent interview. “Having a celebrity on the catwalk, having a celebrity in the room…now I think more of the reviews are about who is sitting front row than what the collection was about. For me, fashion deserves much more than to be reduced to something like this.”
After 37 years, six of them under the majority ownership of Puig, Van Noten is proving it’s possible to work within a conglomerate without losing that creative spark, which is why he’s WWD’s 2023 Designer of the Year for both his women’s and men’s collections.
Van Noten has entered the beauty category in a uniquely artistic way, opened retail at a slow but steady pace, and presented collections that dazzled on the runway with a fraction of the budget of luxury’s mega brands.
A mix master of masculine and feminine, his instinct for color and print is unrivaled, as seen when he mashed up florals of different scales, crushed and pleated fabrics, georgette garlands, snaking ruffles and giant blooms to redefine flower power for spring 2023.
Dries Van Noten RTW Spring 2023
Giovanni Giannoni / WWD
For his fall women’s show, he elevated the craft of fashion — fine tailoring, exquisite heirloom fabrics, dressmaker and mending details — to the lofty stage of performance venue Le Dôme de Paris, and created one of the most covetable items of the season, a coat with a gilded corset waist.
He’s delivered men’s suiting with retro allure, elegant knit sets and pants with trenchcoat skirts. And his creative take on wardrobing was in top form in the…
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