The curtain fell and the disco ball was raised celebrating 38 years and 150 collections of Dries Van Noten, who staged his final fashion show Saturday (June 22) at Paris Fashion Week. The Belgian fashion maestro, a member of the influential "Antwerp Six” known for his innovative and unexpected elegance, announced his retirement in March of this year. His departure marks the end of an era.
To the sound of Donna Summer’s I Feel Love , Van Noten took his final curtain call at a warehouse in northern Paris in front of an 8m-high disco ball, at the helm of a bedazzling silver runway that had just acted as the stage of his swan song – his 150th show. Van Noten is one of the famed "Antwerp Six" designers, including Ann Demeulemeester, who all trained at Antwerp’s Royal Academy of Fine Arts in the early 1980s, and had an important impact on global fashion. His career, which has spanned five decades since his first menswear line in 1986, has been marked by a fusion of familiar and unfamiliar elements, creating a sense of surprise and poetry in his collections.
He is revered across the fashion industry for his unique aesthetic. Read more: 'Just too much': Designer Dries Van Noten on why he is retiring from fashion It’s no wonder the great and the good of fashion, including Diane Von Furstenberg, Thom Browne and Pierpaolo Piccioli, attended the event to celebrate his career. The Saturday night collection gleamed.
It was a varied display playing loosely on the theme of wrapping.
