This text initially appeared on Vogue Enterprise. To obtain the Vogue Enterprise e-newsletter, enroll right here.
Dries Van Noten is to take his remaining bow at his males’s present in June in Paris, Vogue Enterprise has discovered. His successor has not but been named.
The 65-year-old Belgian designer, recognized for his avant-garde collections and opulent use of colors, bought a majority stake of his model to Spanish vogue and sweetness conglomerate Puig in 2018. He remained a big minority shareholder and has continued his position as chief artistic officer and chairman of the board. “I’ve been looking for a powerful associate for the corporate which I’ve constructed for greater than 30 years. I’m particularly blissful that Antwerp and my group will stay on the firm’s coronary heart and centre,” Van Noten mentioned in a press launch on the time of the acquisition. The quantity of the transaction wasn’t disclosed. In accordance with press stories citing trade sources, the corporate’s annual gross sales in 2017 have been below $100 million.
A member of the Antwerp Six collective, he launched a males’s assortment in Antwerp in 1986 and in 1993, introduced his girls’s assortment to the Paris runways. “I’m recognized for color and prints and embroideries,” he instructed Vogue in 2007. “Usually the extra clashing it’s, the extra that I prefer it.” In 2008, he acquired the CFDA’s prestigious Worldwide Award.
With Puig, the designer launched his first magnificence line in 2022, which consists of 10 gender-fluid eau de parfums knowledgeable by his paradise-like backyard outdoors Antwerp and 30 lipsticks. “For over three many years, he has been considered one of vogue’s uncommon unbiased operators who made his identify not on licenses however on garments. And but [the designer] might be higher suited to those issues than lots of his friends,” wrote Vogue Runway and Vogue Enterprise’s Nicole Phelps in 2022. He opened his first retailer totally dedicated to magnificence and equipment in Paris in 2023.
The model counts a dozen shops, plus quite a few factors of sale together with at Nordstrom, Saks Fifth Avenue, Neiman Marcus, Selfridges, Le Bon Marché and Lotte.
In its 2023 annual earnings, Puig described Dries Van Noten as “its fastest-growing area of interest model” additionally stressing a “notably dynamic momentum”. The information of Van Noten’s exit comes as speculations of Puig’s imminent preliminary public providing attain a brand new peak.
Dries Van Noten’s autumn/winter 2024 present throughout Paris Style Week was staged within the outdated retail house for Dutch retailer C&A and attended by Catherine Deneuve, Jeanne Damas and French rising actress Mathilde Warnier. The present provided additional proof of his masterful and shocking mixtures, resembling “gray marl sweatshirt cloth with iridescent sequins, and lavender silk duchess with light denim denims”, as Phelps famous in her assessment. “The offbeat, irreverent combine was the factor, however he additionally made some extent of claiming, ‘“each piece has to face by itself. It’s necessary that it’s not simply trying good when it’s an outfit; each piece has to have its worth,’” she wrote.
It’s an open secret that many items on the runway by no means find yourself hitting the shops. Dries Van Noten is without doubt one of the few manufacturers, alongside Paul Smith, to take a distinct method and produce each piece. Whoever takes the artistic helm of the home can have huge sneakers to fill.
