Dries Van Noten’s Julian Klausner: ‘There is fantasy in the brand — but first there is a wardrobe’

Since his first Paris men’s show in 1991, Dries Van Noten has offered clothing to men that is exciting and, for the most part, wearable. He has proposed clashing florals and Marilyn Monroe-print trousers, the sensuality of Rudolf Nureyev-inspired silk robes and beautifully cut double-breasted suiting. He’s delivered opulent and grungy, arty and dandyish, grown-up and boyish.

In just a few days’ time, the next chapter of Dries Van Noten’s menswear will be written. On Thursday, during men’s Paris Fashion Week, Julian Klausner, who succeeded Van Noten as creative director six months ago, will deliver the first taste of his vision for men’s. It takes place amid this year’s major designer-fashion house reshuffle, which includes new designers at Chanel, Dior and Gucci, so the stakes are high. That Dries is one of the industry’s most loved brands pushes Klausner further under the microscope.

Klausner has never designed menswear before. When he graduated from La Cambre in Brussels, whose alumni also include new Chanel creative director Matthieu Blazy and Saint Laurent designer Anthony Vaccarello, he took up his dream post working for John Galliano at Maison Margiela. He joined the womenswear studio at Dries Van Noten in 2018.

When we speak, Klausner, 34, is finishing the styling for the show at his office in Antwerp with British stylist Robbie Spencer. He is dressed classically in a blue Oxford shirt and no-nonsense spectacles. “I think a parallel between the men’s and women’s was always there,” he says. “Dries men’s can be quite feminine, and Dries women’s can be quite masculine. There are seasons where they reinforce each other, and others where they balance each other out,” he says. “This is always very much in my mind.”

Klausner is relaxed and pragmatic. That’s largely because he knows the Dries design ropes so well, having been Van Noten’s longtime right hand. He recalls the day his mentor and boss told him he was stepping down and asked if he would consider succeeding him. “It was quite emotional,” Klausner recalls. “As much as I could have imagined that it would happen one day, it still came as a surprise.”

Klausner first visited the brand’s flagship store in Antwerp as a teenager. But it was Van Noten’s Francis Bacon-inspired womenswear collection of autumn/winter 2009, shown the same year he enrolled at La Cambre, that made him a fan: “That first look with the woman in the beige coat. Her hair is a bit off, the red lipstick, the snake heel . . . I found it really cinematic and inspiring. It was the first time I started truly identifying with Dries.”

The youngest of four siblings, Klausner was born in Antwerp and grew up in a lively household in Brussels, where his brother had a rock band in the garage and his sisters were always dressing up upstairs. He became interested in fashion as a child, recalling the thrill of trying on clothes at a young age: “I really loved the feeling of putting on a biker jacket or trying on women’s clothes, and how the fabric or the weight or fit of a garment had the power to make you feel really different,” he says.

His parents, while not into fashion per se, are curious and passionate people, he says. His mother restores art deco furniture and his father has a background in architecture. “My father does like clothes,” Klausner says. “I learnt about Italian tailoring and tasteful menswear from him.” Around the age of 12 or 13, Klausner began to take sewing lessons after school, and would make clothing for his female friends.

He starts collections with a story and a cast of characters. For his men’s show, “I had a little bit in the back of my mind this narrative of the morning after a celebration,” he says. “Like after a wedding or prom, and you haven’t slept all night, and you go to the beach for a quick swim, and you are partially in your evening formal, but also have sandy feet in your leather shoes.”

The Dries menswear customer expects the brand to offer good coats, floppy pants, prints and embroideries, Klausner says. He adds that it’s important for each collection to include pieces that can be mixed with other things the customer already has in his wardrobe, whether they’re from Dries or not. “Dries never wanted to design for a specific man or a specific woman. It should be accessible and open to all kinds of people with different styles and different sensitivities.”

He is thinking about the convergence and tension between formal and casual: “I started exploring duchesse and silks, playing with textures and embellishments to see how we can stiffen certain fabrics, how we can make certain fabrics fancier,” Klausner says. “There’s something about the sensations of buttoning up a shirt all the way, putting on a tie, closing a double-breasted jacket . . . It’s the small things that make you feel dressed up.”

The critics responded mostly positively to Klausner’s debut women’s show in March, though some quibbled that certain looks and combinations felt overly complicated. “I think it was a very Dries collection,” Klausner says, acknowledging that it is hard for him to define the difference between his work and the house codes. Perhaps to be expected as he finds his own voice in the company.

“Dries always had a way of toning things down and toning things up,” he continues. “Though as much as there is fantasy in the brand, first and foremost there is a wardrobe, and it’s a very complete wardrobe.”

Unusually for a modern luxury brand, ready-to-wear has always been Van Noten’s calling card, accounting for about three quarters of sales according to a spokesperson. The company was founded in 1986 and ran independently until Puig, the Spanish beauty and fashion conglomerate that also owns Carolina Herrera and Charlotte Tilbury, took a majority stake in 2018.

Van Noten and his partner Patrick Vangheluwe, who has worked alongside him since the beginning, remain involved in the brand, advising on beauty projects and overseeing retail stores. The company has launched make-up and expanded both its fragrance offering and its retail footprint with new stores in London’s Hanover Square and New York’s Mercer Street, with a plan to open another in Milan in September.

Next week’s show won’t be staged in a grand setting like his womenswear debut, which was held at the Paris Opéra Garnier, but in a more casual, minimal space with daylight. “I really want this collection to speak for itself,” Klausner says. “I’m curious to see if people will feel a difference.”

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