van Noten, Dries

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    Dries Van Noten Retires From Fashion With Final Paris Runway Show

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    As the Belgian designer ended his career with one last runway show in Paris, he left a reminder of why his is a storied legacy.“I tried to make things people would cherish,” Dries Van Noten said on Saturday evening, during a cocktail party and dinner preceding his final runway show. Mr. Van Noten held his first show in Paris back in 1991; now, at 66, he is stepping away from his namesake brand. His retirement was a shock to many in a business in which careers tend to be abnormally truncated or else to exceed their expiration date.The decision to retire was not taken lightly, Mr. Van Noten said. Whose is? And it was destined to be a disappointment to fans of this gentle Belgian’s presence on the scene. And they are many. Why? There was his evolved craftsmanship. There was his singular gift as a colorist. There was his ability to skew pattern and tweak silhouette without compromising wearability. Perhaps alone among the designers of the vaunted Antwerp Six group he belonged to, Mr. Van Noten produced, for 150 collections, commercially accessible, cherishable clothes.Fans and designers gathered at a pre-show party in a warehouse on the outskirts of Paris.GORUNWAYA pre-show dinner party of a kind the French term a cocktail dînatoire was held in a warehouse on the outskirts of Paris. Fans from throughout the decades — among them, the designers Pierpaolo Piccioli, Thom Browne, Glenn Martens, Stephen Jones, Harris Reed and Diane von Furstenberg — floated about a vast space as waiters poured Champagne in abundance and circulated with trays bearing tiny bowls of beet soup, white asparagus with poached egg, foie gras and shrimp on skewers.As a waiter passed with a flight of beef tartare snacks, Edward Buchanan, the designer and Milan fashion director of Perfect Magazine, waved them away. Raw beef at parties is iffy, he said.Asked about his relationship to Mr. Van Noten’s designs, Mr. Buchanan told a story. “Two years ago in L.A., all my things were stolen,” he said. For months after the theft, he spent every spare hour obsessively combing the internet for replacements — not of his personal mementos but of his lost Van Notens.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Dries Van Noten Announces Retirement

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      The Belgian designer, known for his glorious use of color and prints, remained independent for years. Now he’s going out on his own terms.In a shock to the fashion world, Dries Van Noten announced that he was stepping down as creative director of the brand that bears his name. His fall 2024 men’s show, scheduled to take place in Paris in June, will be his last.“My dream was to have a voice in fashion,” Mr. Van Noten, 65, wrote in a letter sent to editors. “That dream came true. Now, I want to shift my focus to all the things I never had time for.”Mr. Van Noten was an original member of the Antwerp Six, the group of Belgian designers who changed fashion when they arrived in Paris in the early 1980s. In his statement, he wrote that he had been “preparing for this moment for a while, and I feel it’s time to leave room for a new generation of talents to bring their vision to the brand.”In an industry in which founders often cling to their positions well into their 80s and rarely engage in succession planning, Mr. Van Noten’s move stands out as a rare example of a designer ceding power by his own choice — and at the height of his skills. His last women’s show, held in late February in Paris, was an emotional, generous paean to style over fashion and the creativity of dressing oneself.But the consideration, originality, grace and attention to detail that marked his clothes, and that inspired a 2014 solo exhibition at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris and a 2017 documentary about his work, have also marked his approach to his business.Looks from Mr. Van Noten’s last women’s show in Paris in February.Photographs by Imaxtree, via Dries Van Noten (far left); Pascal Le Segretain/Getty ImagesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More