AP Fashion Writer, New York
Belgium’s Dries Van Noten is one those designers, and while his name may not be familiar yet, fashion insiders have decided it should be. Van Noten’s clothes come in wearable, almost practical silhouettes, but in fabrics so rich and interesting that the look is anything but boring.
Van Noten recalls: He had forgotten his mobile phone at his office – a 60,000-square foot warehouse that had billeted both German and Allied troops during World War II – and there was a terrible thunderstorm that afternoon. “It was like a cheap horror movie with the lights turning on and off.”
She eventually got through at the house, but it was a bad connection. All Van Noten could make out was, “I have news” and something about a prize. She had to repeat the part about him winning several times, he says with a laugh.
Van Noten, 50, comes from a fashion family, but his grandfather and father, both tailors, were more interested in retailing. But Van Noten himself wasn’t sold on that side of the business. He took the knowledge gained while attending fashion shows with his father and transferred it into his own designs.
Following a Jesuit education as a boy, which he credits as giving him a moral center, he enrolled in fashion classes at Antwerp’s Royal Academy.
Photos courtesy of the Fashion Spot forums.
