Dries Van Noten Spring 2025 Menswear Collection
Dries Van Noten held his first ever Paris runway show back in 1991. Tonight he presented his last. Although he will continue to advise the design teams from afar, Van Noten, 66, is stepping down from the day-to-day creative direction of his eponymous brand in order to enjoy a fresh phase of life.
While preparing to cover this evening’s much-anticipated show on Vogue Runway, we compared notes and shared reminiscences about Van Noten experiences from the past. We concluded that following his collections has been like enjoying a long-ongoing and brilliant conversation with a fascinating friend. This friend’s essential personality has remained consistent and true, yet he is always also pushing to inject something new and unexpected into the dialogue.
That’s because although he’s always been known for the wearability of his clothes, Dries has nonetheless been one of the most experimental of designers when it comes to the runway. Which is why we decided for this final Vogue Runway Dries Van Noten review we would conduct an experiment of our own—a review through conversation.
Nicole Phelps: I can’t remember a situation comparable to this. Many designers have been forced out of their positions. Others have left at their peak—think of Helmut Lang and Martin Margiela. But for a designer founder to choose to walk away and to share the news before a show rather than after—it’s special. A last goodbye.
Luke Leitch: He’s designed his own departure: How elegant is that?
NP: Very. I suppose it comes down to having worked as an independent designer for as long as he did—over 30 years before selling a majority stake to Puig. Doing things when you want to do them, how you want to do them. I’m happy for Dries and his garden, but it’s definitely a loss for fashion. We need more designers thinking and working on a human scale, like he always has, not more brands selling logo T-shirts.
LL: There was a lot of solidarity shown from the community of designers. So many showed up tonight. In no particular order I saw Thom Browne, Pierpaolo Piccioli, Diane von Furstenberg, Glenn Martens, Walter Van Beirendonck, Veronique Nichanian, Neil Barrett, Alexandre Mattiussi, Harris Reed, Filip Arickx, Maria Cornejo, Haider Ackermann…
