Dries Van Noten is all about slow fashion.

Speaking on the WWD Apparel & Retail CEO Summit, the Belgian designer said he likes to remind young designers that it took him 10 years after graduating in 1982 to stage his first fashion show.

“And even then it was a men’s show, really small, after which the ladies’s show was even later. So take your time. That I believe for each young designer, it’s vital, because some people just begin to run after which the issues are there,” he said in a conversation with WWD West Coast executive editor Booth Moore.

The 2023 recipient of WWD’s Designer of the 12 months award, Van Noten has quite the opposite cultivated a slow and regular approach that has served him well at times of economic instability. “When any individual desires to grow really fast, it’s never good,” said the designer, who maintains a sprawling garden at his Antwerp home.

Now 65, Van Noten remained independent until 2018, when he joined forces with Puig. The Spanish beauty and fashion group acquired a majority stake in his brand and helped him launch recent categories comparable to fragrance and color cosmetics.

“Once we approached Puig, it was also because we understood in actual fact we were like an enormous small company and we desired to grow, because standing still shouldn’t be the appropriate thing, and particularly not for me,” Van Noten recalled.

“We would have liked strong shoulders for that, and that’s exactly what Puig gave us. They gave us really support to expand, to do recent things like e-comm, expand our accessories business, open stores in China and things like this,” he added.

The partnership has not altered the essence of his Antwerp, Belgium-based brand, he said. 

“Like in every good marriage, I believe there are good days, and sometimes less good days, but I believe they really respected us, so that they didn’t need to put the Puig stamp on our company,” he explained. “For me, it was very vital also to seek out a partner who would allow us to remain in Antwerp, because Antwerp is basically not only the place where we work, but it surely’s also our soul.”

Being outside the key fashion capitals allows Van Noten to work at his own speed. “In Antwerp, it’s enough to whisper, you don’t should shout. I believe living in an enormous city like Latest York, sometimes it’s form of a struggle, and in that way, I might begin to shout more, I believe, than to whisper, and I prefer to whisper,” he said.

It took Van Noten 4 years to develop beauty, which launched last 12 months with 10 gender-fluid fragrances and 30 lipsticks in refillable packaging.

“In each products, there’s far an excessive amount of already available on the market. So there once we began, we said we are able to only do it when it is smart, that we are able to bring colours for lipsticks in an intensity [that] shouldn’t be yet available on the market, so it was really lots of work,” he said.

“But additionally within the perfume, I took all of the noses through the garden to elucidate the mere incontrovertible fact that I need to have a recent tackle certain perfumes and certain smells. And in addition besides that, in fact, every thing needed to be completely as sustainable as possible,” he added.

“I see the climate change on a regular basis within the garden so it’s something which is, I believe, on everybody’s mind or needs to be on everybody’s mind. And in fact, fashion is an enormous polluter so we’ve to contemplate that and really ask ourselves questions: What can we do? What can we do to enhance?” he said.

Van Noten’s approach to collections swims against the tide of knowledge, celebrity and drops.

A mixture master of masculine and female, his instinct for color and print is unrivaled, as seen when he mashed up florals of various scales, crushed and pleated fabrics, georgette garlands, snaking ruffles and giant blooms to redefine flower power for spring 2023.

“I don’t design total silhouettes,” he explained. “First, I create form of a general mood board of things with what I need to precise with the gathering. I do this along with my team. But then after that I actually design garment by garment, accessory by accessory, that every thing which we create has sense by itself and that also afterward, the one who buys these garments, in actual fact, can mix it in lots of alternative ways.”

Which means he’s not against revisiting ideas. “After all, I actually have certain things which I really like which I fall back on quite often,” he confessed. “For me, the largest compliment is all the time when people begin to mix collections from different periods.”

For all that, Van Noten doesn’t have a set method for working.

“When there’s a system, it kills creativity, because you simply begin to repeat things. No, for me, it’s really that I actually have to surprise myself and likewise my team,” he explained. “I do that already for a really very long time, so I don’t need to be bored and I believe also the ultimate customers don’t need to be bored by seeing time and again the identical product, perhaps in a distinct color.”

While a lot of his employees have been with him for many years, the oldest person on his women’s design team is 32.

“They’re a excellent sounding board for me because in fact I’m 65 so I’m not the youngest anymore, but still sometimes I feel the youngest of the bunch. I still can shock them, I still can trigger them and I believe that’s really my job also because I actually have to stimulate them,” he said.

Van Noten says he likes to query things, from world events to gender relations, and brings to the conversation the angle of somebody who went to his first fashion shows in 1977 and saw the emergence of French talents like Jean Paul Gaultier and Claude Montana, followed by Japanese designers within the ‘80s.

Then there’s the unspoken incontrovertible fact that he was a part of the group of six Belgian designers (including Ann Demeulemeester, Martin Margiela and Walter van Beirendonck) who in 1991 drove a van to Paris to indicate, and took town by storm, becoming often known as the “Antwerp Six.”

The third generation of his family to work within the apparel business, Van Noten grew up in his father’s fashion stores and has been expanding his own network of boutiques. The brand opened its first mainland China store in Shanghai and its first U.S. store in Los Angeles in 2020, followed by stores in Shenzhen and Chengdu in 2021 and 2022.

“I need to respect every city by creating a distinct store,” he said of his approach. “Like with collections, I don’t desire a formula which you simply apply in every store.”

That considered approach explains why Van Noten, a darling of shops, has all the time resisted pressure to supply pre-collections.

“It’s really vital to inform a full story with a fashion show,” he said. “I want lots of time to create all those fabrics, to create all those shapes, and I just need to be completely satisfied with what I make or what I show to the general public. So for me, two collections for men, two collections for girls, that’s all I can do.”