For SLEEK #67 we had the rare opportunity to talk to Dries Van Noten about his new collection, the new challenges we’re all facing, cashmere sweaters in summer, opulence overload and the hidden teachings in olives. Unequivocally optimistic, he truly believes that the crisis is a huge chance to transform the fashion industry – and life in general – into something positive again.
What do you miss the most right now?
Most people think that Dries Van Noten is a person, but Dries Van Noten is a team. Normally we play creative ping pong: you say something, somebody reacts to it, another person hears it and reacts to it. That group energy is not there – for me it’s the thing I miss most.
And when you meet, you can only guess at the emotions behind the mask.
Yes, for me the small nuances are very important. It’s really difficult to capture what somebody thinks. Does he like it? Does she find what I say interesting or is she thinking “oh my goodness”?
Does the pandemic teach you to be more intuitive?
I’ve learned a lot from it. Especially the first time when we were really, like, locked up in our house. We were forced to reflect, to rethink everything. All we knew was there won’t be a fashion show, but we didn’t know how we were going to sell our collection. It was a very interesting time because everything in fashion stopped. And that never happened before.
What were your thoughts about the future?
What people were going to need garment-wise the next season or how they were going to feel, what their needs were going to be? I think in the end nobody really needs a lot of clothes, but you still need a certain dream. You need the beauty of fashion. We had to find ways to replace the emotion of a fashion show with something else.
Everybody knew that everything was too much and too fast in fashion.
Which led to the first virtual show in your career, a fashion film by the Dutch photographer Viviane Sassen and artwork by the late New Zealand filmmaker Len Lye.
Yes, we learned a lot last season, finalising collections, organising photo shoots – which is not our normal thing to do because we communicate mostly by fashion shows. But on the other hand, we learned so much about selling the collection digitally. Normally the clients had to come over to the showroom. Now when all those people can’t travel, it’s a good thing sustainability-wise. The collections were about 40 per cent smaller, everything was more condensed. Going back to the essence is not a bad thing. Travelling is nice, but do we need all the clients coming over four times a year to see collections, and do we need to do fashion shows, which have a big ecological footprint? Do we need that? Or is that maybe the chance for doing a photoshoot a more direct communication, maybe, than just a fashion show? So, it’s quite interesting.
Those are exactly the thoughts you expressed in your open letter to the fashion industry, which was published in May 2020. Do you think you would have written this letter if there hadn’t been a crisis?
Everybody knew that everything was too much and too fast in fashion. But the pandemic made what went wrong even clearer. I think that the biggest fear in the fashion industry was that once the thing was over we would just continue the way we did before. That was why I took the initiative to write a letter. For me, it was not only to talk with other designers; I wanted to have a talk with a department store, a small retailer, a more established designer, somebody who was more into accessories. In the end, we had, like, 18–20 people around this table. And it became clear for us quite early that the thing we really had to change first were the sales dates. The whole thing changed quite a lot with the rising importance of e-commerce. Sales in January and July make sense. Winter coats in stores in the middle of May don’t make sense. I think after all the problems, all the pain and things which the pandemic brought, this is maybe one positive thing: we are now working on the new normal. It should be normal that you can still find a summer dress in June and don’t have to buy a cashmere sweater.
Do you think nature can fail?
I think nature is perfect imperfection. It’s quite scary being a gardener, climate change is really here. And that, of course, has nothing to do with nature. It has to do with human beings. I think people who live in cities don’t feel it so much. When you live in the countryside and you have a garden, you see the drought, too much rain, a lot of storms. But I think you have to embrace the imperfection of nature, you have to admire it. The combination of everything can be so beautiful and gives so much inspiration.
You have something in common with the famous dancer and choreographer Pina Bausch. She was known as a perfectionist, but once declared: “I’m not in search of perfection, I am interested in the merciless pursuit of honesty”. She was always trying to expose truthfulness. What is the motivation behind your perfection?
In my case, it’s a combination of novelty and beauty. We have to ‘move forward’ – how people look at beauty, what’s beautiful for you, what’s beautiful for me – learn from each other in that way. I’m very curious, I want to understand. When I don‘t understand something, I ask somebody to explain it to me. For me it’s like learning to eat olives: the first olive you eat is maybe not really nice, but at a certain moment you start to appreciate it. Olive by olive you gain knowledge and you can tell blindly if it’s a green, a brown or a black olive. There are so many things in the world which are so interesting to look at. But traditional beauty is not what I’m really interested in. Maybe a show is perfectly beautiful, but when I didn’t make a real step forward, I wasn’t happy with it. For me, it has to be an evolution.
And even after 112 shows you’ve never copied yourself!
I don’t want a combination of tricks – for me, it’s not about finding a system, then you have A and B and then you mix it. I want the challenge, and when it’s a challenge, things can go wrong. That’s the fun and the horrible part of fashion. But standing still is not an option.
The most unsuccessful collection was the one inspired by painter Francis Bacon in 2009. And yet it is still one of your favourite collections. What is your armour against other people’s opinions?
Oh, I’ve made several. It changed a lot in the past. In the [past] when you did the fashion show, you had retailers and the press who came to see the collection and said if they liked it or if they didn’t. Now, with social media, you have a billion people who can say that if they love or hate it.
I want the challenge, and when it’s a challenge, things can go wrong. That’s the fun and the horrible part of fashion. But standing still is not an option.
Speaking of your very uplifting SS21 collection for men and women: high-waisted Bermuda shorts; loose jackets; white, oversized mesh shirts; windbreakers; swimsuits; tank tops; the full length of an essay printed on the back of a dress, like art in motion. The whole collection is fresh, lively, optimistic, like a breath of fresh air.
For me, it was important that the beauty of this collection gives hope, something which has a future, not a nostalgic beauty that makes you dream or long for the past. It had to be something energetic, very positive, like looking at the sun. I wanted to do something very colourful with movement.
How did you discover the avant-garde artist Len Lye?
Honestly, we just started to Google and at a certain moment we found a little lm and I said, “Wow, that’s fantastic.” First I thought it was from the late Sixties, completely psychedelic. But then I heard the music. Why would they do a film like this to the sound of Josephine Baker? I then discovered that it was in fact from the Thirties, which is quite amazing, because it’s so forward-thinking, it’s so direct, it’s so incredible. And then we started to try to find more information about him – he was also a friend of the artist Man Ray.
You absorb the world, your surroundings, like a sponge, but right now that’s not possible. We still have search engines, but besides that everyone is trapped in their own story.
Yes, but the observation of things didn’t stop. When you can y around the world, you have so much information, you drown in options and don’t have time to see the beauty happening just in front of you. Now the world became a little bit smaller, but on the other hand, you open your laptop and again, you have, like, the whole world in front of you. It’s not the same thing as seeing it personally and being able to form your own opinion about certain things. But still, there’s a lot of information out there.
Did you collect or conserve some ‘inspiration’ in the years before all this?
I’m collecting a lot of books, but didn’t even have time to look at some of them because most of the time it’s, like, OK, you’re telling yourself you’re going to have looked at it by next weekend. Or when I’m going to have a few days off when I am on holidays, then finally I’m going to take the time to look at all those books … And then you go on holidays to a city and go to the first bookstore and buy more books. Now I have the time.
During the last two years that whole natural movement – minimalism, ‘less-is-more’ and ‘everything-is-beige’–has become quite a trend. The complete opposite of your collections. Are you sometimes saturated by the opulence?
Sometimes it is too much. The maximum of opulence was, of course, the collaboration with Christian Lacroix in Autumn 2019 – it couldn’t have been more brocades, embroidery, frills, feathers and elegance.
I believe embracing limitations can teach you a lot.
You are doing four collections per year. How do you empty your mind’s creative canvas between them?
In my collections, I always follow a kind of wave. This winter there was much more darkness, inspired by gothic women and very free-spirited, flamboyant men. And now I wanted to clean up. So, when you look at the Len Lye collection, it’s more cleaned-up, aesthetically, more white on white. On the one hand, because we wanted it that way, on the other hand, we also couldn’t make a very opulent collection. There was no time, our fabric suppliers were not open in Italy. We had to work with prints that we could make quite easily. You have to be creative in a different way, we have to embrace the limitations. I believe embracing limitations can teach you a lot.
What is your antidote for the fear of failure?
I don’t have one. But maybe it’s creativity and beauty for me. The good thing that comes with age is experience. Knowing when something goes wrong it’s bad, but also that there is always the next one. The next collection, the next show. That’s the nice thing about fashion. When you’re in the position of a musician and you make a record and this record is not a good one, afterwards you still have to tour and do all those concerts. Or let’s say you have one hit, but you really don’t like it that much, but still, you would have to play that hit at every concert again. I think that would be more of a big problem. You know, the only advantage in fashion is that it is really hard and really fast. Six months later you can correct or you can try to correct the things which you thought you did wrong the last time. It’s a big chance to move on.
When one show is over you immediately start to create a new collection. Do you ever get any rest between the collections?
No, we already start the new men’s collection while we are finishing the women’s. It’s always: first the men’s collection and then the women’s collection. There is never a moment when we don’t have to think about collections. We can’t take a break, there’s always that overlapping of one season to another.
Which means you never stopped in the last, say, thirty years. You never stopped creating?
No, never.
It’s a heavy beat. Are you tired?
Sometimes, yes, but I think I’m just as tired sometimes as I was the first year I was designing collections. It’s not that I’m bored with it after all the years. Sometimes the pressure can be very, very hard – the whole time you have to deliver and make decisions. You look at the piece of fabric, you have to decide if you like it or not. You have to decide what colour, what shape you’re going to make. And it depends on how it looks short, long, high waist, low waist, and how are you going to combine it? The whole time you have to make decisions.
But with time you gain more of a routine, more confidence with the decision-making, right?
But on the other hand, you can’t take anything for granted. You can’t say, OK, this is now my experience. Because again, when you start to serve up all your knowledge it gets boring. You have to surprise yourself and try to think outside the box the whole time. Some people ask me: when you’re surrounded the whole day by fabrics and colours, why have you dressed always in a navy sweater? Most fashion designers have a uniform because we are constantly working on decisions about materials and details. The last thing you want to do in the morning when you open your closet is to say, “I have got to wear the orange sweater with the purple scarf and the green trousers.” No, you just want to grab some garments, put them on and that’s it.
Absolutely! It’s also a way of disappearing, you become more the observer than the observed. When you create something, you don’t need to be seen from the outside.
Many people like to be very flamboyant, but for me, it’s not the case. My job is more about making decisions than making myself the window display of my creativity.
You need to leave room for surprise and coincidence; the nicest outfits emerge when something spontaneous happens.
For the rest time this year, you put together the men’s and the women’s collection. Was this born out of necessity due to COVID-19 or is it something you can imagine continuing?
Before we did this I said I’m going to do it once, but never again. And now I’m really open to it. It creates interesting opportunities. I won’t say it’s going to be systematic because I don’t like systems and formulas. But the fact that you still can add an extra layer to the aesthetic of a collection by combining men and women is something I only discovered now.
You don’t like systems but you like to plan ahead very precisely, even your holidays.
Yes, you have to plan things, but you have to stay open and be very alert to see if things are happening that were not planned. If you plan it, it’s already a little dead. You need to leave room for surprise and coincidence; the nicest outfits emerge when something spontaneous happens, something very spontaneous, like when you have the model change and she’s still wearing the top part and she puts the bottom part of the next outfit on and we look at it and say, “Oh, wow, this is much better!” You have to have a very open eye.
That’s a playful and brave way to do it. You are famous for mixing leopard print, stripes, embroidery, fabrics and patterns you normally wouldn’t mix. And it always looks amazing and unpredictable.
I think it’s a little like the garden. You can have a completely clean, perfect garden where you organised every plant that you want to seed. But then the moment you have some self-seeding plants in between, they would just pop up from the year before. Oh, this wasn’t planned, but it gives the garden the beauty, the patina and the whole atmosphere. In that way, nature always knows better – where to plant certain colours and things like that. You have to be open. That, I think, is also true for fashion. And for life.
You can also read our coverage of Dries Van Noten’s SS21 co-ed collection here.
This article originally appeared in SLEEK #67, which is available now both in print and digital editions.
Credits
Photography: Tom Blesch
Styling: Christian Stemmler
Styling Assistance: Léon C. Romeike
Hair & MakeUp: Janina Zais
Nails: Lisa Mård