In a shock to the fashion world, Dries Van Noten announced that he was stepping down as creative director of the brand that bears his name. His fall 2024 men’s show, scheduled to take place in Paris in June, will be his last.
“My dream was to have a voice in fashion,” Mr. Van Noten, 65, wrote in a letter sent to editors. “That dream came true. Now, I want to shift my focus to all the things I never had time for.”
Mr. Van Noten was an original member of the Antwerp Six, the group of Belgian designers who changed fashion when they arrived in Paris in the early 1980s. In his statement, he wrote that he had been “preparing for this moment for a while, and I feel it’s time to leave room for a new generation of talents to bring their vision to the brand.”
In an industry in which founders often cling to their positions well into their 80s and rarely engage in succession planning, Mr. Van Noten’s move stands out as a rare example of a designer ceding power by his own choice — and at the height of his skills. His last women’s show, held in late February in Paris, was an emotional, generous paean to style over fashion and the creativity of dressing oneself.
But the consideration, originality, grace and attention to detail that marked his clothes, and that inspired a 2014 solo exhibition at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris and a 2017 documentary about his work, have also marked his approach to his business.
Mr. Van Noten had been taking steps to ensure the future of his brand, which he founded in 1986, since 2018, when he sold a majority stake to the Puig fashion and fragrance business, agreeing to stay on as chief creative officer and chairman of the board. It was a big step for a designer who prided himself on independence. But he had just turned 60, he told The New York Times in 2022, and he found himself thinking about his health and the future.
“Do we have enough heritage?” he said. “Is there enough reason that the company can continue the moment that I would stop?”
The partnership with Puig allowed the brand to increase its team and expand into new categories, including beauty and fragrance. But even after relinquishing some control of his business, the pace of the industry could still frustrate Mr. Van Noten.
“After a career of all these years, you never can take six months off, or even two months off,” he said, adding that the longest break he’d ever taken was two weeks. “I think it’s the dream of every designer to just, at a certain moment, be able to skip one season.”
In 2020, he cowrote an open letter with other designers about the need to fix the seasonal shopping calendar so that brands could find a more sustainable production rhythm and break the cycle of extreme discounting.
But he also knew that fashion’s impossible pace could be a good thing, mentally, for a designer. If a collection wasn’t received well by critics or shoppers, there was no time to mope. “You have to move on,” he told The Times. “You have to forget. You have to start again. And I think that’s really amazing. That’s quite addictive and I think that’s also what keeps me continuing.”
Mr. Van Noten, who received the international designer of the year award from the Council of Fashion Designers of America, was named an Officier de L’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by France and was anointed a baron by the King of Belgium, said in his letter that a new designer would be announced in “due time.” He would remain involved in the brand, though did not specify the role.
He is a passionate gardener — the flowers at his home outside Antwerp inspired many of the gloriously colored textiles and styles that were his signature — and often goes on garden tours with Ann Demeulemeester, another member of the Antwerp Six who stepped back from her own brand.
Whatever avenue he chooses to pursue, however, what is certain is that, just as he and his peers once set a new tone for the industry, Mr. Van Noten is now revolutionizing how departure can look.