Super lightweight 200-gram silk suits, billowing summer shirts and oversized silhouettes to make you move: freedom is in the air and Dries Van Noten is feeling it. “Normally, when you start a collection, you think, ‘What is it going to be about? What are the shapes, what are the dyes?’ And that’s something we’ve learnt now: it doesn’t matter. I just want to make clothes and combine them,” he said on a video call from Antwerp. Within the frames of lightness, his men’s proposal for the post-pandemic summer of ’22 was a feel-good exercise in impulse, whim and positive energy.
“We were in lockdown number five here in Antwerp when we started,” Van Noten said, recalling how his studio was hankering for a sense of freedom. He asked them to scour the image libraries of their phones for snapshots of Antwerp before the pandemic set in. “Some had taken more postcard pictures of buildings, and some had taken more gritty, dirty pictures of old cafes. It’s all really personal things we collaged together.” Van Noten emblazoned the pictures on shirts along with historical Antwerpian trademarks, from Rubens to Bruegel and an Antwerp city seal from the 1970s.
The film was shot in public
An ode to Antwerp, the collection had to be shot in the city streets, too. Van Noten staged a light-hearted video captured around the everyday locations of Antwerp, showcasing looks on a podium that moved the city. “We shot it in public, so people were watching and commenting. ‘Oh, is that a Rubens I see on that T-shirt? Is it really?’ Some people recognised the images, of course, like the cranes. And some didn’t understand what the guys were wearing at all,” Van Noten laughed. “‘What is this, what is he wearing now? That’s so strange. Why?’ It gave a really positive vibe to the whole thing.”
An ode to Antwerp, the collection had to be shot in the city streets, too. Van Noten staged a light-hearted video captured around the everyday locations of Antwerp, showcasing looks on a podium that moved the city. “We shot it in public, so people were watching and commenting. ‘Oh, is that a Rubens I see on that T-shirt? Is it really?’ Some people recognised the images, of course, like the cranes. And some didn’t understand what the guys were wearing at all,” Van Noten laughed. “‘What is this, what is he wearing now? That’s so strange. Why?’ It gave a really positive vibe to the whole thing.”
Van Noten was inspired by his Italian home
Fuelled by the reemergent energy we’re feeling this summer, there was a hyper-summer sensibility to Van Noten’s collection which he excels in: the kind of clothes that make you want to go on holiday. “Building a house in Italy also helps!” he noted, referring to the 17th-century tower “built nearly in the water” that he and his husband, Patrick Vangheluwe, have been renovating since before the pandemic. Done up in the 1920s and ’80s, “we’re trying to take the ’80s vibe a little bit out of it,” Van Noten smiled. “Most of the work is controlled via FaceTime, but we had to go down because it was getting complicated. We’re constructing a new kitchen, which is going to be my new paradise. It’s really fantastic.”
Fuelled by the reemergent energy we’re feeling this summer, there was a hyper-summer sensibility to Van Noten’s collection which he excels in: the kind of clothes that make you want to go on holiday. “Building a house in Italy also helps!” he noted, referring to the 17th-century tower “built nearly in the water” that he and his husband, Patrick Vangheluwe, have been renovating since before the pandemic. Done up in the 1920s and ’80s, “we’re trying to take the ’80s vibe a little bit out of it,” Van Noten smiled. “Most of the work is controlled via FaceTime, but we had to go down because it was getting complicated. We’re constructing a new kitchen, which is going to be my new paradise. It’s really fantastic.”
Van Noten still has no runway plans
Since the first lockdown, Van Noten has been optimistic about the change the pandemic might bring to fashion. While he said a shoot like the one he did for this collection is “much crazier” than putting on a runway show, he has no plans of returning to pre-pandemic procedures. Now, he said, fashion should reflect the same freedom that informs his work. “I don’t dream of doing a men’s and a women’s fashion show again every season. I think it would be more fun to do a mixed show one season, a video the next season, an installation the season after that, and then go back to a show. It’s going to be like that, I think.”
Since the first lockdown, Van Noten has been optimistic about the change the pandemic might bring to fashion. While he said a shoot like the one he did for this collection is “much crazier” than putting on a runway show, he has no plans of returning to pre-pandemic procedures. Now, he said, fashion should reflect the same freedom that informs his work. “I don’t dream of doing a men’s and a women’s fashion show again every season. I think it would be more fun to do a mixed show one season, a video the next season, an installation the season after that, and then go back to a show. It’s going to be like that, I think.”
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