Why it belongs in ORBIS
One of the 'Antwerp Six' — poetic menswear and womenswear with print mastery, tactile luxury, and a singular creative vision. Now part of Puig.
Dries Van Noten was one of the Antwerp Six — the graduates of the city's Royal Academy who drove a van to London in 1986 and rewired fashion's map — and he became the movement's gardener-poet. From a first menswear collection sold to Barneys and Whitaker's, he built a house on prints layered like sediment: Indian embroidery over English tailoring, photographic florals on military parkas, colors mixed the way painters mix them.
He did it without a single advertisement for over three decades, independent until Puig's 2018 investment, showing in Paris while cutting in Antwerp — the Modenatie headquarters above his own flagship. His runway spectacles (a mile-long banquet table, 500 guests; carpets of real marigolds) are collected on film the way the clothes are collected in closets.
Van Noten took his bow with the Spring 2025 menswear show; Julian Klausner now writes the house's next chapters. The signature survives the succession: fashion's most literate maximalism, prints with a library behind them.