At the end of summer last year, Julian Klausner and his team visited the Lycée Carnot – a prominent school in Paris’ 17th arrondissement – and it stirred something in the designer: memories of adolescence, self-invention, and those formative years when identity is all soft and malleable. In the show notes for his FW26 Dries Van Noten collection, Klausner described those years as a “work in progress” era – a phrase typically reserved for artistic exploration, but equally apt for the gradual, messy process of finding yourself.

For yesterday’s show, Klausner returned to the Lycée Carnot setting for a coming-of-age narrative relatable to all, exploring the “vulnerability and confidence, confusion and clarity” of school days, when every feeling is set to maximum intensity and clothes become tools of self-definition.

The collection began with school classics, elevated through embellishment, illustration and cut. The perfectly proportioned duffle coat, pristine white shirts with gilded cuffs, blazers fitted around the body, a handbag slung over one shoulder like a backpack. Gradually, the order loosened and things started to evolve, experiment and rebel. A preppy striped shirt so untucked it coiled around a collegiate blazer, outerwear covered in punkish plaids, oversized bombers, double denim and grunge-toned florals (the Dries girl had discovered Kurt Cobain).

With each look came a subtle shift – a tweak, a new influence layered on – charting the constant experimentation of adolescence. Two 17th-century Flemish still lifes were printed and pixelated into abstract patterns, and artful embroidery, patchwork and jacquards were cut and stitched together like DIY decoration.

The soundtrack underscored the feeling. As guitar riffs slowly built, 19-year-old French jazz musician Gala Dragot recited diaristic fragments from a teenage mind: “I hope I stay curious forever.” “I am wrapped in gardens, wrapped in words.”