Heavy romance

He’s magic with a reference: Dries Van Noten interviewed in the new issue, plus our shoot featuring his masterful SS15 collection
By Susanne Madsen | Fashion | 15 January 2015
Photography Guy Aroch
Fashion Gro Curtis.
Above:

All clothing DRIES VAN NOTEN SS15, shot by Guy Aroch for HERO 12: Darkness Falls

Taken from HERO 12: Darkness Falls, out now

Dries Van Noten’s favourite ever work of art is Jean Fouquet’s Virgin and Child Surrounded by Angels from the right panel of the Melun Diptych, which hangs in Antwerp’s Royal Museum of Fine Arts. “It’s completely surreal. The angels are bright blue and bright red and it’s an amazing, amazing painting. You don’t know if it’s surreal or 17th Century but it is in fact 15th century,” Van Noten says.

Filmed for the designer’s epic Inspirations exhibition at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris this year, it’s a completely electric, sumptuous and strikingly modern piece, just like Van Noten’s work. If there’s such a thing as subtle or restrained splendour, he is it. And he’s on fire, to the delight of his ever-growing flock of devoted Driesciples. With its flowing robes and exquisite goldwork, Van Noten’s Rudolf Nureyev-fuelled SS15 collection was an exercise in his skilful ways with romance in the dark sense of the word – pronounced with a guttural, Belgian R.

Since founding his label almost thirty years ago, Van Noten has been weaving together a rich, textured tapestry of eclectic impressions, filled with symbolism and narrative on modern life. His pieces are the opposite of throwaway fashion, and deeply personal. “My collections are very layered in terms of meaning, inspiration and all these things,” he says, on the phone from Antwerp one afternoon in September.

All clothing DRIES VAN NOTEN SS15

All clothing DRIES VAN NOTEN SS15

Susanne Madsen: Hi Dries, how are you?
 Dries Van Noten: Very good, very good.

SM: Are you busy working on your SS15 womenswear?
DVN: The women’s collection is ready. We’ve just finished here in Antwerp. We have a completely different schedule than other fashion houses. So in fact we leave now on holiday until the fashion show in Paris.

SM: That sounds very lovely and organised. Where are you off to?
DVN: We go for a few days to Capri. The weather in Belgium was so bad in the month of August that we craved a little bit of warmth and sunshine.

SM: It’s been such a great year for you with the exhibition. Did it change anything in how you view your work?
DVN: For me it was very daunting. In the beginning you say, “OK, an exhibition, very nice.” Then you start to dream about it and how you want to present your work, because in the end I’m still feeling too young as a designer to have a retrospective in a museum. So I thought I’d build it around inspirations. And then you dream of putting in artworks and the first confirmation you get for one of the artworks of your dreams like the Elizabeth Peyton – not any Elizabeth Peyton but the specific painting you asked for – that was amazing. But I have to say the first garment that went behind glass was really a very strange thing for me. I’m so used to seeing my clothes here in the archives. It was kind of, like, this is not really possible. But now my work is there.

SM: Did it make you think about your work as art?
DVN: No, not really. But going through the archives, sometimes with my assistants who quite often were not even born the year I created that garment, that was quite scary. It was interesting to look at those clothes with them around and to hear their reaction. Sometimes I said “Oh, this for me was an important collection” and then they said “Really?” And then at other times where I quickly said “OK, maybe this” because it was something I’m not very proud of, they said “No, in fact this is very exciting. Can I have a look through that again?” They look at fashion in a different way.

All clothing DRIES VAN NOTEN SS15

All clothing DRIES VAN NOTEN SS15

SM: The first room in the exhibition was sort of your teenage bedroom with all your idols. It felt like a proper fanboy bedroom. Do you still feel like a fanboy sometimes with the things you’re excited about?
DVN:  Yes, I’m very spontaneous with things and when I love something I really love it. And then I will tell everybody about it. I’m an enthusiastic person. I think in fashion you have to be enthusiastic and you have to be quite direct. When I see that which I really love, then I just go for it. OK, I don’t put the posters in my bedroom anymore, but still… [Laughs] It takes on another form.

SM: At the same time, there’s such a big fandom and cult surrounding your work. How do you feel about being an idol to people?
DVN: I don’t really realise that. For me, it’s all very elitist. I know that people for the moment love my work, and sometimes that’s quite impressive. I did a talk in New York once and the tickets were sold out in five minutes. I have sort of those things where, like, whoa, what’s happening? Who wants to hear me talk? These things I suppose are quite fun to realise. But on the other hand I think it also helps that I live in Antwerp which is a healthy distance away from the whole fashion craze which also puts my two feet firmly on the ground. Which is the best place to be, I think.

SM: I’d love to talk to you about your SS15 collection. There seemed to be quite a lot of references to your graduate collection. What made you look to that?
DVN: Going through the whole archive for the exhibition, you start to ask yourself a lot of questions. So automatically I think that things are popping up again. For me it was also quite nice to see the lines in the collections that I make. When you make one collection after another, I never really take the time to step back and look at my work as one big thing. With the exhibition, I was forced to look to my work as a total thing. And I think it’s normal with the new collections that you see references to things I already did before but in a new way.

All clothing DRIES VAN NOTEN SS15

SM: It had a very sensual feel. What made you want to explore that?
DVN: For me it was kind of a reaction to the rather cliché thing of the rock attitude. For a man to look masculine, give him black leather, a chain, a beard. Everyone wants to look like they’re part of a rock band which I think is a little bit strange. I like that, but for me we have to move on. I wanted to add something else to that – still masculine but something showing skin, something sensual, showing masculinity in a different way. I’m quickly bored so the moment I get something and the general mood is there, I want to move on and have fun with it and see how we can push boundaries and things.

SM: Do you see that as your responsibility as a designer – to push boundaries for menswear?
DVN: Not really pushing boundaries, no. For me it’s important that of course fashion moves on and that I can add new elements to the menswear garderobe, but above all that people have fun with fashion. I think that is the nice thing about menswear – you have a whole bunch of elements. For me the challenge is to keep a few inside the boundaries and a few out of the boundaries. And not exaggerate in that because when you push too far then men say “No, that’s not me anymore.” Then they don’t connect.

SM: What is masculinity to you?
DVN: Oh, that’s a difficult question. [Laughs] It’s somebody who really feels great and shows that. That for me is masculine. I think for everybody it’s so individual that it’s very difficult to give a general answer to that. There are men who look very masculine in a very feminine way. I think one of the best examples of that is David Bowie who in the past played with all these elements. It’s about sexuality, it’s about desire, it’s about feelings. But it’s a completely individual thing and that’s very important for me – to be really confident in yourself.

SM: I thought the casting for SS15 was really interesting. What kind of thought went into that?
DVN: For me the idea was it has to be more men than boys. They were more grown-up than our normal castings. Also, I wanted to show skin and bodies but I didn’t want to show the pumped-up gym bodies, so we really tried to find guys that had what we called long muscles. Like a ballet dancer who doesn’t have those short muscles which give the six pack and all that. They had more the long, lean, graceful silhouettes.

SM: I noticed a nod to the Jesuit symbol both in SS15 and in your graduate collection. What do you find interesting about using ecclesiastical symbols?
DVN: I think that religion is part of life. Religion for me is as much part of life as culture and so many other things, so for me it’s a normal starting point.

All clothing DRIES VAN NOTEN SS15

All clothing DRIES VAN NOTEN SS15

SM: Does religion play a big role in your life?
DVN: I think whether you want it or not it plays an important role in everybody’s life. Whether you believe or not or what religion you are part of, it’s not so important. Even when you’re completely not religious, there’s still the reason that you’re there and all these things, and for me, that’s part of life.

SM: With religion, there’s aesthetically often a lot of pomp and circumstance and gold. Gold is something that runs through your work a lot. What do you love about it?
DVN: Gold can be rich, gold can be cheap. Gold has so many meanings. Its colour, its shine. It’s something that fascinates me because it can tell a different story for everybody. The richness, the wealth, the warmth can also be the coldness of richness, the cheapness of everything, the bling bling. [Laughs].

SM: I sometimes feel like all the gilded splendour and romance of your work has a dark undercurrent to it.
DVN: For me, as with everything, I think that is life. Life is not only about beauty and looking good and nice clothes. I think everywhere there’s kind of a dark side. And a lot of people maybe didn’t suspect that or see that so much in our work. They thought “Oh, it’s ethnic, it’s romantic.” But I think by seeing the exhibition where we have the Damien Hirst, the Flemish painting with rotting fruit and the butterfly which flies away and all those elements – aggression and that, like with The Piano – they saw the darkness which I think is as much part of my aesthetic and my life as the pretty side.

SM: I’ve picked up on a little bit of memento mori in your floral prints.
DVN: If something is too pretty I don’t think it’s right. Pretty is wrong for me. There has to be some scary darkness between the pretty flowers. [Laughs].

SM: Speaking of the underbellies of things, you’ve looked to punk and skinhead and ravers and different subcultures. Do you think there are still new and exciting subcultures out there?
DVN: For me, it’s most exciting that there are no big trends anymore. Every city has its own subtle subculture in a very individual way. Even when I look around here in Antwerp at all the things which are happening, all the music scenes and cultural theatre, there’s space for so many things. In the time of punk, everybody was punk. Afterwards everybody had to be New Wave. Now you can be so many different things and everything is right for this moment.

All clothing DRIES VAN NOTEN SS15

SM: You talk about how now everything goes. I remember when I was a teenager in Denmark I used to go to this shop in Copenhagen called Mads Nørgaard, which stocked your pieces. And it being the nineties, everything was so minimal and I remember your pieces stood out so much because they were anything but minimal. What was that time like for you?
DVN: Yeah, it was really the Helmut Lang years. [Laughs] I always want to do things which I like. OK, of course I have to follow fashion in one way or another because at the end you have to sell your clothes. It makes no sense to make clothes if nobody responds to it. But as long as you have a good response I think then you can continue to do things. At that time it was not really only the clothes that I made which sometimes made me ask questions. It was also the whole way the fashion world changed. Especially the end of the nineties was a time when all the smaller designers joined big groups. Helmut Lang joined Prada, McQueen went to the Gucci Group. For me, that was really the scary moment. It was not really the type of garments and products that you made, it was more the whole concept of being a young independent designer which was put into question.

SM: But you never went down the big conglomerate route.
DVN: No, no, no.

SM: Is control something that’s important to you?
DVN: I’m a control freak. I like to control, I’m a perfectionist, I want to see everything. That’s maybe one of the reasons why our company is the size it is. Maybe we could have been much bigger but then I lose control, especially creative control. Then my job would be more like being part of big meetings and not so much being able to decide every colour of every paillette and every yarn of knitwear. Yeah, I’m a control freak but on the other hand I don’t want to control creativity. I hope you don’t see control freak in my creative work. [Laughs].

SM: Definitely not. I see a dreamer. What guides you in designing?
DVN: What guides me most in designing is an emotional reaction. I need to create something which evokes something. It goes really with a lot of intuition. The whole thing has to speak to me. When people see the show I want them to be surprised in one way or another. Especially emotionally surprised. Not like “Oh my goodness, what did he do now” but “Oh, we didn’t expect to see that.”

SM: So it’s way more of a heart than mind kind of decision?
DVN: Yeah, what I’m most scared of when I’m designing is that there are tricks. That there’s a kind of system, a moment that you say “Now when you have this colour or garment, put this with it and people are going to like it.” Which for me is really what kills fashion. I like to do experiments. I think with my quite long career it would be too easy to have tricks up my sleeve, like “Do this and that and that and shake well and now there’s a collection by Dries Van Noten.” I want to surprise myself, I want to surprise my team and I also want to surprise my clients.

All clothing DRIES VAN NOTEN SS15

SM: At the end of a show, how do you feel?
DVN: Then I want to run away. It’s difficult because I want to share my emotions with friends and Patrick [Scallon, communications director] my partner, and everybody. But then you have to talk for at least twenty minutes with people from the press. It’s a difficult moment. The day after the show, most of the time I go back home. And then a few days afterwards I have what we call my postnatal depression. Then I think everything was bad and everything was wrong and I wanted to do it differently. And then a few days later I can see for the first time. I can watch the video because before that I can’t confront it.

SM: Do you still get nervous before shows?
DVN: Yes, yes, yes. Even though it’s show number ninety or ninety-one we’re doing now. You always think “Oh, at a certain moment I’ll get used to that” – forget it. It’s not like that. It really gets worse and worse. But now it’s good because we’re really ahead with the collection and the styling and we can take a few days off. I’m going to take a few good books with me and try to forget a little bit what’s coming the week after that. [Laughs].

SM: If all of fashion collectively decided to take a year’s holiday, what would you do in that time?
DVN: What a dream that would be! One thing I would do is first rest, a lot of travel, and then put together a big conference with all other fashion designers to see how we could change the fashion system.

SM: What would you like to change about it?
DVN: Quite a lot of things. But that’s maybe another interview. [Laughs] For that you need to come over because that’s going to take a long time.

SM: At least you haven’t given in to the madness of pre-collections and resort and all that. I don’t really understand why we need so much stuff.
DVN: There are so many clothes around at the moment. Especially in combination with the internet. There are so many visual things coming at you. Every day there is a visual war almost on your screen, to get into your eyes and into your brain. But you still have to create to get attention. That’s a really scary thing for me.

SM: Speaking of the fashion system, what are your long-term plans for your brand? Could you imagine someone else designing under your name one day?
DVN: I think so. Of course I have a big responsibility. I have a lot of people working for me. In India for instance we have nearing production time three thousand highly skilled people who do the embroideries for us. That’s why in every collection we have so much embroidery. I think it would be a little bit lazy to say “Sorry, people, I’m bored with it, I stop.” So I think at a certain moment when I’m ready for that, I can prepare my company in a way that maybe somebody else is taking over from me under my control, or even independently, why not?

All clothing DRIES VAN NOTEN SS15

Fashion images additional credits: Models KARLIS ADLERS at IMG and LAURIE HARDING at FUSION; grooming LISA- RAQUEL at SEE MANAGEMENT; production MIRANDA NERI at JED ROOT; photo assistants MATT ELLIS and WYN HERRICK; fashion assistant AIRIK HENDERSON


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