Words matter. These are the best Dries van Noten Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
When I have to do something fast, I wear the most unflattering rubber pants over my pants and a big easy sweater. I can get on my knees in the garden in whatever condition, and when I’m done, I can take it off, get in the car, and drive to the office. It’s the most practical thing.
I think by my father owning a store, I was definitely aware of the commercial aspect of selling clothes. His shop was a place I enjoyed spending time in as a boy, so I learned things almost by osmosis at times, by literally just being around all the action and not really despite myself.
I’m really hands-on. My team brings in elements, but, every season, it’s kind of a personal struggle to find the balance and to see how far I want to push the elements.
My morning routine varies by how much time I have. In the winter, I like to take baths, but in the summer, I prefer a good shower with some soap and then maybe some moisturizer afterward. I use D.R. Harris and Geo. F. Trumper products, which we also stock at our shops in Paris and Antwerp.
Various different people have inspired me throughout my career. From Francis Bacon to Vassareli, Coco Chanel to Christian Dior, Cecil Beaton, musicians, architects… the list is endless.
All my collections are very personal. It’s also because I’m so involved in making the collections.
I have a responsibility to the people who work for me, the manufacturers I work with. There is no point to clothes that don’t sell.
You’d think after 100 shows you’d be used to this, but it’s not true for me. It always feels like the first show.
I love the journeys of research and discovery their development takes me on. I see prints as less ‘decorative’ than many might, and more fundamental to a garment’s core.
People get this very romantic vision of a fashion designer who in one night makes 25 sketches and in the morning throws them on the table and there are a lot of women in white aprons with the pins on the lapel and they start to grab the sketches and… It’s not like that.
When we were studying at the Royal Antwerp Academy, we were taught to seek inspiration from everyone, everything and everywhere. My parents and grandparents were also a great inspiration for me a very young age.
I try to be as independent as possible.
The word ‘fashion’ I don’t like because fashion is something that’s over in six months. I’d like to find a word that’s more timeless.
I look back on shows now that I thought were good, and I don’t like them so much anymore. Or criticism I didn’t understand or agree with now makes sense.
I have my own office, and I’m there during the evenings and weekends. But during the week, I’m sitting in the middle of my studio, talking with everybody, deciding together every detail, every pallette, every yarn, every colour.
I’m part of the fashion system, but I don’t want to follow all the rules. I don’t want to be contrarian – I just want to do my own things, which are most honest and correct to do.
I prefer ugly things. I prefer things which are surprising.
For me, it’s really like, okay, if you go far with the unexpected materials and unexpected proportions or volumes, then keep the colors quite simple and straightforward for men.
I like to choose my own way forward. I really do want to create something that I personally like a lot.
In the design process, there’s a need to be culturally comprehensive.
We always say that fashion is a reflection of our times.
Clothes is just something you put on to cover yourself… fashion is a way to communicate.
The garden is my second profession. It’s 22 hectares, which is a big garden. I really need it, going from the flower garden, the shrubs and the trees, the vegetable garden, all these things.
For me personally, there’s too much fashion around in this world.
One of the big luxuries of being in Antwerp is that I can easily walk in the city. In Paris and New York, I am more recognized.
I collect objects I fall in love with more than antiques per se. Value is not a criteria that attracts me to something.
My partner, Patrick, and I live in an old house in Belgium that was built in 1840 and is out in the countryside between Antwerp and Brussels.
Many a fashion designer’s career was founded using packs upon packs of Polaroids, and though we love them, we forget that the image quality was often circumspect.
Coincidence is important, the convergence of different ideas.
I make clothes people can wear; I don’t make art.
