Blooming Tales

Finding solace in nature and the return of in-person shows, Dries Van Noten is optimistic about the future and ready to have fun

- Cherry Mui

My personal style is fairly boring, I have to admit,” Dries Van Noten tells Tatler over a video call from his Antwerp studio. “I’m working the whole day and nearly seven days a week on selecting colours, yarns, fabrics, shapes … the last thing I want to do in the morning is open my wardrobe and say I’m going to wear the green sweater with this and that.” The Belgian design master is wearing a navy jumper and a yellow scarf—an accessory he is almost always spotted wearing in public. “Nearly all fashion designers have their own uniform just to escape from that moment. My only thing in fact that I have changed is the scarves, which I have big piles of—and in all different colours,” Van Noten says with a laugh.

Van Noten is not one to follow trends, though; he finds his aesthetic by “going with the flow”. And it works: to this day, the brand, which marked its 100th fashion show in 2017, doesn’t advertise in magazines, or present collections online or to media before clients have seen them, or dress celebrities and influencers simply to attract new customers— although he has plenty of celebrity fans. “At our [new] LA store, we have a lot of customers coming in to buy clothes to perform in. We dress basketball players, football players, actors, filmmakers, musicians, all those people,” he says. “But it’s really because [they are] interested in the clothes and not because we send a big box of clothes to them. That’s the way that I like to do it.”