Dries Van Noten is a 64 year old Belgian designer. Born into a family of garment makers, he graduated from the Antwerp Academy in 1980 subsequently launched his career as part of the Antwerp Six collective. His eponymous label is associated with eccentric style, and his fans include Cate Blanchet, Maggie Gylenhaal, and Queen Mathilde of Belgium. Earlier this year, the fashion designer launched his first-ever cosmetics line. SLEEK visits Dries to talk about the inspiration for his latest venture, the beauty of nature and how one translates a feeling into a fragrance.
SLEEK: Your first-ever beauty range featuring 10 fragrances and 30 lipsticks launched in spring this year. Once upon a time, you said that the search for beauty fascinates you. But for that, I guess you have to define beauty, don’t you?
DRIES VAN NOTEN: There’s so much beauty out there, it’s impossible to define what beauty is. I like beauty with its imperfections, with something strange combined with it.
S: Where does beauty arise? Where do you find it?
DVN: Beauty is everywhere!
S: Here’s the image I have in my mind: You’re standing in the shimmering light of a young day, barefoot, cup of tea in hand, looking out at your field of roses.
A kingdom of roses, some of which are closed or open. Thinking about this, I wonder: How is it possible to ‘translate’ such moments into a fragrance?
DVN: Yes, indeed. The beauty of perfume is that it can transport you to a place and time; that it reminds you of a certain moment, a certain emotion. And, as in fashion, I aimed to create something that could touch a person in their soul. A perfume is also a way of expression. It allows you to nuance your personality by conveying a facet of what you feel at a specific moment.
S: Which way of translation did you consider for your latest line of 10 fragrances?
DVN: You have to put the essence of who you are as a designer in a bottle. But as for scent, just as I don’t like to dictate how people must dress, I didn’t want to impose a certain smell either. For me it wasn’t about creating a nice perfume but trying to evoke emotions. I invited the perfumers to ask themselves the question: How do you feel when you walk through the garden? How can we translate a certain something into a fragrance? Which emotions can a certain colour evoke?
S: So for you, with your nose for a good scent, is a rose garden ever simply a rose garden?
DVN: I always acknowledge the contrast between gardening and my work as a designer. Nature makes you wait, while fashion rushes on with abandon. In fashion, you must control, while nature will always surprise. It is why I often turn to florals in my collections, they can convey so many different things. As with the flowers in my garden, I play with combinations of roses. When I think about everything a rose can stand for, like a revolution, the symbol of love, all those
things, it’s such a powerful element. In my past collections, I have often used the rose as a symbol. I once did a collection where we photographed the roses in the garden. It was the end of the season, so colours faded a little, imperfections appeared and there were little black spots on them. For me it gave the flowers reality, making them much more interesting. A sort of strange beauty that goes together with everything I stand for.
S: Combinations that seem a little strange are often underestimated. But then these oddities are sensual, exciting and you never forget them. How did you
find these combinations in your fragrances?
DVN: When I met the noses, I asked them to forget everything they knew about perfumery. It was really important that they would take some distance, dare to bring together ingredients that we would not initially put together. In the same way that I sometimes combine colours and prints or certain atmospheres that have nothing t do with one another, we wanted to create a clash of unexpected combinations of ingredients.
S: What variety or combination surprised you so much that it triggered a strong reaction?
DVN: In my collections, I often work with impossible combinations by associating things that don’t naturally go together. I find perfection frightening, sometimes boring. But when you put elements in opposition, something always happens, I love that!
Behind the Scenes: Glass & Porcelain. Image Courtesy of Dries Van Noten
S: When we start to love something, we want to keep it … But how do you create a fragrance that you fall in love with and squeeze into a bottle?
DVN: Creating the collection was like creative ping-pong. It wasn’t easy, we had initially 24 propositions and we ended up selecting only 10. But from the beginning, we knew we wanted to create something different. I knew I wanted to stand out from the classical scents that already existed and provide them with a twist. My brief to the noses [people employed to sample scents] was to really surprise me. If I liked a rose scent, how could we make it different by combining it with a completely different ingredient – almost abrupt – and unexpected? This would also give me the opportunity to create a rose scent that would be perfectly wearable for men as well. In the end, we have 2 quite incredible rose perfumes: one is more modern and disruptive, mixed with pepper, and the other one is associated with vetiver, which makes the rose less romantic but strangely beautiful.
S: The 30 lipstick shades in your current range have names that read like parts of a story. There’s Stanley Orange, Ruby Jimmy and Latin Carmine. Do you use
colours to tell stories?
DVN: I’m passionate about colours, I use colours to express how I see things – they underline my creativity. It was interesting for me to see how far we could go with certain ideas, what we could do with them. We wondered if we could make the colours more intense, if we could make them more matte, or shinier. All those little details that make things more special.
S: What makes a color grab your attention?
DVN: Colours can be so much, it is a translation of an emotion, something that you see. Some people don’t see it, some people will notice it. I see a lot of nuances, and this is something I like to play with. For this beauty collection especially, it was quite interesting to see the colours and discuss their density, but we also had to work with it in terms of textures: how they would capture the pigmentation and the light.
S: You were raised not to throw anything away. Is that the background of why you worked on a refillable concept for the packaging and products?
DVN: Preservation of craftsmanship and prioritizing respect and integrity for the planet and its people is vital for me. It is why I create items to last, to be collectible and timeless, an object to be passed on to generations. As in fashion, we are fully engaged with the evolution of our times and doing our best to be as sustainable and mindful as possible.
S: Can you describe what approaches and thoughts served as a source of inspiration for you when designing the entire cosmetics line? Where did you find them – or did they find you?
DVN: Designing my own beauty line was a dream come true. For make-up for example, we always made a big focus in our fashion shows, sometimes more discrete, other times in the form of a bigger statement. It was always a part of the total look. In terms of fragrance, on the other hand, I wanted this project to be a conversation, to approach it with input from a lot of different angles. Because a scent is very personal, I wanted to learn from other people’s associations.
As featured in SLEEk 73 – PASSION. Available in print and digital here.