Dries Van Noten's nostalgia for the future A goodbye, rather than a farewell, for the Belgian master

In his message included at the end of the notes of his latest show as creative director, Dries Van Noten quoted Marcello Mastroianni and his “nostalgia for the future,” a kind of romanticism of looking forward, also adding that this show did not represent a grand finale. Nonetheless, the atmosphere was fairy-tale-like: very few celebrities, a lineup of aficionados of the brand and long-time clients, but above all, a gathering rarely seen of fashion powerhouses all come to celebrate a companion, a colleague, and a friend at his swan song. Ann Demeulemeester, Walter van Beirendonck, Haider Ackermann, Glenn Martens, Thom Browne, Diane von Frustenberg, Pierpaolo Piccioli, and even, according to accredited sources, Martin Margiela anonymously present among the audience, coming out of his (for lack of better terms) seclusion to celebrate Van Noten. The theme of “nostalgia for the future” meant, for Van Noten, not to treat his last show as a playlist of his greatest hits – which would have meant enclosing his work within a well-defined beginning and end, bottling it for the future but museumizing it, depriving it of vital momentum, transforming it into a self-contained anatomy. Instead, Van Noten preferred to produce the most refined work possible, leaving the scene with an open ending that bridges the conclusion of his journey with the beginning of a new path. It is no coincidence that the designer emphasized that he will not simply retire but will continue as a sort of mentor to oversee the brand.

There was also room for a healthy nostalgia for the past: the model who opened the show, Alain Gossuin, for example, was the same one who had opened Van Noten's very first show 38 years ago. And it is to be suspected, if it is true that Margiela himself was present, that the collective emotions of Van Noten himself and his colleagues and designer friends were incredibly high, like the final chapter of a long saga in which they all started as fashion students like so many others. But it was obvious that this show would be a celebration of these affections, a homecoming so to speak, as well as the culmination of a career carried out in a fashion world facing increasingly dramatic changes. We recall an interview he gave last year to WWD: «The whole celebrity situation is getting kind of out of control. Having a celebrity on the catwalk, having a celebrity in the room…now I think more of the reviews are about who is sitting front row than what the collection was about. For me, fashion deserves much more than to be reduced to something like this». If he had not wanted to retire from the scene, and judging only by the collection, Van Noten had much more to say and do. Nonetheless, by concluding a long and honored career, turning the page at this point in his life, the individual Dries Van Noten tells us that in life you have to move forward or be moved forward just like in art; that the past is not the last refuge of feelings and that there can be richness without ostentation, intelligence without pretension, and passion without exhaustion.