Dries Van Noten's successor has been announced

Update 9.12.2024: The Dries Van Noten fashion house has announced that the brand's next creative director will be Julian Klausner, former head of womenswear who has worked alongside the founder since 2018. His first collection will be presented during January, but it will not be a show: the designer will release a lookbook of the menswear section, while the first runway show will take place during Womenswear Fashion Week in March. 

Everyone is talking about Chanel's creative director, but at the same time, the celebrated Dries Van Noten is preparing to enter a new phase after its eponymous founder decided to step back from the brand's creative direction after a career spanning nearly four decades. According to WWD, the Puig-owned brand, celebrated for its avant-garde romanticism, exquisite garment construction, stunning colors, and prints, may have found the most likely candidate to succeed the founder and lead the design moving forward: Julian Klausner, a womenswear designer who has been part of the brand's team since 2018. As reported by WWD, Dries Van Noten recently concluded a round of interviews with high-level designers across Europe but did not find a satisfactory figure, leading the brand’s management to focus on an internal promotion. Naturally, there is no official confirmation yet, so we will need to wait for an announcement from the brand to confirm or refute the news.

Julian Klausner boasts a stellar résumé: a graduate of La Cambre, the prestigious Belgian school attended by Anthony Vaccarello, Marine Serre, and Matthieu Blazy, Klausner has accumulated significant experience with internships at Thom Browne, Kenzo, and Maison Margiela, where he worked for nearly three years starting in 2016 as a junior designer. While the immediate creative direction of the brand remains in the hands of the studio team, Klausner’s potential appointment is reassuring news if confirmed, as it demonstrates the brand's commitment to preserving its identity rather than pursuing a path of commercialism, which in these times can be particularly detrimental. Van Noten himself maintains a connection with the brand as a consultant, focusing primarily on new beauty and fragrance segments (which live up to his reputation), and the upcoming men’s collection set to be showcased in Paris this February is also expected to benefit from his “supervision,” even as the entire fashion scene awaits the beginning of a new era with anticipation and a touch of trepidation.