Agenda-setting intelligence, analysis and advice for the global fashion community.
Right now, fashion is being radically reconfigured by an upheaval in creative directorships, but I most definitely have not been in a position where I got to sit down at the same time with one of the industry’s éminences grises and the person who replaced him. That was made possible simply because everything about Dries Van Noten has always radiated intelligence, humanity and common sense (and beauty and idiosyncrasy and more glory than we have ever had a right to expect from fashion, but that’s a whole other thing). Dries without Dries might have struck ardent fans as an impossibility. Julian Klausner is proving them wrong, with his mentor’s unconditional support. Dries is launching his third act with his purchase of the Palazzo Pisani Moretta on the Grand Canal in Venice. He and his partner Patrick Vangheluwe plan to turn it into a major cultural centre. That’s one future. Meanwhile, Julian has a remarkable inheritance to take forward into another future. More than three decades separate them but that makes me think of them in generational terms. The family of Dries is big. They were both in their hometown, Antwerp. I was in London. We Zoomed.
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