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A year after Dries Van Noten presented his final collection, his successor Julian Klausner presented his men’s debut show this Thursday in Paris. He sent out paréo around the waist, evening tops with boat necklines, boxy silhouettes and plenty of cummerbunds.
“I was really thinking about the men’s Dries wardrobe. It’s a very complete wardrobe, going from day to evening to beach wear, all the accessories,” Klausner said after the show. “I always admired Dries for the way he balanced things together, and I lent myself to that exercise.”
It was a high-stakes show for the Puig-owned house. Dries Van Noten’s clientele is discerning fashion aficionados, meaning expectations would be high. Klausner, who was appointed to the creative director position in December, didn’t have much formal experience in menswear, having worked with Van Noten on the women’s collections since 2018. And of course, with a large wholesale distribution, Klausner also needed to successfully convince buyers of the brand’s new direction.
“Men’s is where Dries Van Noten started, so it’s a very important part of the expression of the brand,” Dries Van Noten president Axel Keller told Vogue Business before the show. (A member of the Antwerp Six collective, Dries Van Noten launched a men’s collection in Antwerp in 1986, and he presented his first womenswear runway in Paris in 1993.)
Today, women’s is bigger than men’s by revenue, but the men’s category is a significant share of the Dries Van Noten business (the brand doesn’t share the breakdown of sales by gender), and a strategic one. Keller says that men’s is particularly high performing in new Dries Van Noten stores. The house has been on a store opening spree lately, having opened stores in London, New York, Brussels, and it has reopened its Tokyo boutique. It counts 14 stores globally (and is set to open its 15th store in Milan). That includes three stores dedicated to beauty products, leather goods and jewellery. Puig doesn’t break down sales of individual brands. Dries Van Noten sits in its “niche”, which also includes Byredo and Penhaligon’s.
