Opposites attract

Dries Van Noten’s love of dramatic contrasts and unusual combinations shines through in his perfectly packaged new beauty range

- MARY CLEARY

Dries Van Noten likens smelling his perfume to eating olives. ‘The first one makes you go, “Ooh, what is this?”’ he says over Zoom from his Antwerp studio. ‘But after that, you always like it. I think you have to learn to appreciate things, and sometimes you have to learn to appreciate my vision of beauty.’

That beauty can – and often should – be consciously attained rather than instantly perceived has been a defining feature of Van Noten’s work since he showed his first fashion collection in 1986. The Belgian designer is a connoisseur of contradictions, with a matchless ability to synthesise sartorial opposites. Collections are influenced by the high-brow (he once based an entire season on Elizabeth Peyton’s painting, Democrats Are More Beautiful) and the mundane (prints made from iPhone photos taken by his team), while past trends (19th-century dandies, 1970s glam rock) are reworked to create distinctly modern pieces.

The most crystalline expression of Van Noten’s penchant for ‘impossible combinations’ is inarguably his use of colour and pattern. Van Noten produces all of his own textiles, and his particular brilliance as a designer lies in his ability to combine textures, patterns and colours that would, to anyone else, seem inherently wrong. His latest collection, for example, paired psychedelic silk-screened button-ups with flapper-esque outfits in sea green, tangerine and blue.