Paris Erupts in One Big, Sparkly Last Hurrah for Dries Van Noten
If you were to imagine the very best of fashion, the most strikingly beautiful garments, the warmest shop floors, and the richest sense of imagination, you would visualize the work of Dries Van Noten. For the 38 years he designed his eponymous brand, Van Noten brought an eclectic kindness to the fashion industry through his intelligently designed and unpretentious clothes. When he shocked the fashion world and announced his retirement earlier this year, it was more than just the fashion set who mourned. People from Michelle Obama to Thom Yorke to high school teachers like my own father have worn his clothes and loved them. Few could argue with Van Noten’s logic: “My dream was to have a voice in fashion,” he wrote in a press statement announcing his retirement. “That dream came true. Now, I want to shift my focus to all the things I never had time for.” His Spring 2025 menswear show on June 22 in Paris would be his last—ever.
The show was set in La Courneuve, inside a vacuous warehouse. Nearly one hour before the 8:30 p.m. show time, guests had already assembled outside, perching against the graffiti walls in the equinoctial sunlight. Doors opened by 8:15 p.m., and in flowed the guests and well-wishers, including Thom Browne, Pierpaolo Piccioli, Ann Demeulemeester, Glenn Martens, Meryll Rogge, Kris Van Assche, Haider Ackerman, and, if one rumor was to be believed, Martin Margiela. On the celebrity front, Norman Reedus and Russell Westbrook represented the poles of Dries’ reach, from grungy actor-artist to polished sportsman.
Until nearly 10 p.m., guests wandered around a cocktail area. A central plinth displayed scenes from the brand’s past, including leopard coats catwalking above backstage footage of Dries working. The documentarian Loïc Prigent wandered with his camera in hand, capturing as Dries mingled amongst the guests before the show, ensuring everyone got a selfie or photo opp with him. “He’s like nobody else,” Prigent told me. “He is not on trend; he’s at his own pace,” and with a cheeky smile, he added, “and he’s sweet and cute.”
Sweet may not sound like the traditional quality of a fashion designer, but Van Noten’s kindness and warmth were the talk of the pre-event. Andrew Bolton, the chief curator of the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, defined the designer’s most resonant trait. “I think he has a generosity of spirit. There’s a sort of magnanimity that comes through, just in terms of his ideas. He grabs inspiration from everywhere. He is a bit like all those great designers like Karl [Lagerfeld], who see inspiration everywhere but can channel it down in his way,” Bolton said. “Nothing’s heavy-handed with him in everything he does. It’s always a sort of gentleness and a sort of quietness. I think that sometimes the sort of quietness and the self-reflection within his collections is what is appealing against the loudness in fashion.”
Pinpointing exactly why Dries is so popular and so beloved is difficult because it’s almost too obvious. As I looked around the cocktail hour, guests compared their outfits, most a collage of Dries Van Noten pieces past and present. These are glorious clothes that have an innate respect for their wearer. A Dries garment is without tricky shenanigans or unnecessary flourishes. It’s loose in the right places and sensual in others. It’s grown-up in its intentions, with sharp shoulders or serious navy wool, but indulges in young fantasies, all Marilyn Monroe prints or sequin lobsters.
To wear Dries Van Noten is to discover that the bizarre harmonies he was able to find between brocade could couple with a stripe, how sequins could be embroidered into the finest chiffon, or how apple green tinsel could harmonize with the faintest lavender poplin cotton, exist within yourself. He’s about freaking it without flustering it.
Street style photographer Phil Oh summed it up between shooting the guests of the show. “Things that seem like statement pieces turn into parts of even more beautiful outfits,” he told me of how his favorite subjects wear Dries. “A statement piece becomes an essential.”
At 9:57 p.m., a curtain opened, and the silver foil runway revealed itself. David Bowie’s voice, excerpted from the Moonage Daydream film, began, “Time, one of the most complex expressions. Memory made manifest is something that straddles past and future.” Out came Alain Goussin, the model who opened in Van Noten’s first show in 1991, in a long black coat, khaki trousers, and flat sandals. Translucent shirts and pants in clay tones and bombers embroidered with golden bouillon and precious gems followed. Eventually, a sunburst of neon and pastel colors came through. Neon coral brushed wool coats and crinkled polyamide clear overcoats gave a glittering sheen to the oversized floral prints and subtle lavender, rose, and golden separates they were paired with. Models like Karen Elson and Debra Shaw toted giant lambskin bags, like women going away for a long weekend trip. And soon it was over—even at 69 looks, it felt too short as Rokas Kavaliauskas closed the show in gold-and-silver foil trousers and a black double breasted overcoat.
“I still wanted to prove things, and I wanted to step forward. It’s not that I said, ‘Now, we’re going to do the best of,” said Van Noten backstage after the show. “It was really the idea to do new materials, the wadding of recycled cashmere, transparent recycled polyesters, and things like that, and all those really classic English wools. The contrast of all those things was really important.” It was not, he made clear, a retrospective or a grand finale. But a show that is meant to cast the Dries Van Noten spirit into the future.
As a singular show, as a last show, it’s a bold and humble idea not to reflect and instead continue to push design forward. Against the landscape of the other Spring 2025 menswear shows that had taken place in Paris, Milan, Florence, and London, it proved once again why Van Noten is a master. His ability to read the vibrations of a moment—right now, popular fashion trends from “quiet luxury” to things like “office siren” are hewing understated, minimal pieces with flashes of color. Other designers get lost as the spirit of fashion changes, but Dries finds a way to fracture reality through his own kaleidoscope. It’s why, of course, he’s one of our best.
Few people get to design their own legacy—especially in fashion. Since fashion transformed itself from a niche industry into a global pop cultural powerhouse in the 2000s, many creative directors have spun out, burned out, or been burned by the system and left without a job. Goodbye is rarely on their terms. Throughout the night, I couldn’t shake the thought of what all the other designers in the room must have felt. Some whose brands were shuttered, some who were let go from brands they made internationally famous, some who are still beating the drum for individuality. Few people get their flowers where they can see them. What else could Dries Van Noten’s final show be, then, but a garden of celebrations. “I’m very happy, I’m very, very happy,” Van Noten said. “The idea was that it was going to be celebration. I hope it was.”
You Might Also Like
