Dries van Noten Quotes
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People get this very romantic vision of a fashion designer who in one night makes 25 sketches and in the morning throws them on the table and there are a lot of women in white aprons with the pins on the lapel and they start to grab the sketches and... It's not like that.
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I'm really hands-on. My team brings in elements, but, every season, it's kind of a personal struggle to find the balance and to see how far I want to push the elements.
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When we were studying at the Royal Antwerp Academy, we were taught to seek inspiration from everyone, everything and everywhere. My parents and grandparents were also a great inspiration for me a very young age.
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In the 1980s, I was quite well known for my knitwear, and a lot of inspiration came from carpets, where I found ways to use structures and colors and depth of colors.
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My morning routine varies by how much time I have. In the winter, I like to take baths, but in the summer, I prefer a good shower with some soap and then maybe some moisturizer afterward. I use D.R. Harris and Geo. F. Trumper products, which we also stock at our shops in Paris and Antwerp.
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Fashion shows are really my way of communication.
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My partner, Patrick, and I live in an old house in Belgium that was built in 1840 and is out in the countryside between Antwerp and Brussels.
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I prefer a scruffy atmosphere.
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I prefer ugly things. I prefer things which are surprising.
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For me, a show is an event - something we work toward that focuses an idea.
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My childhood was very, very, very, very traditional.
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I'm a fashion designer, not a shoe designer. I like to design clothes.
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I have a responsibility to the people who work for me, the manufacturers I work with. There is no point to clothes that don't sell.
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I'm a very big fan of winter-flowering shrubs and bulbs. You have the smell, you have the color - it's really like a present from God when something like that is in flower in the middle of the snow.
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For me, it's really like, okay, if you go far with the unexpected materials and unexpected proportions or volumes, then keep the colors quite simple and straightforward for men.
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Various different people have inspired me throughout my career. From Francis Bacon to Vassareli, Coco Chanel to Christian Dior, Cecil Beaton, musicians, architects... the list is endless.
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My office looks very empty compared with my house. The house is completely crammed full with things that Patrick and I love. It's very eclectic. There are things that have no value but which we like. We have a lot of Belgian painters; we have international painters. We have nice things; we have ugly things. I don't want that things are predictable.
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I started the company in 1986, but we didn't have the money to do a show until '92.
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The garden is my second profession. It's 22 hectares, which is a big garden. I really need it, going from the flower garden, the shrubs and the trees, the vegetable garden, all these things.
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I like it when you have something happening by coincidence. Just something in a book is enough. But I prefer a fragment of an image so you are far more free to bring in elements of your own.
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I like to choose my own way forward. I really do want to create something that I personally like a lot.
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For me personally, there's too much fashion around in this world.
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I love the journeys of research and discovery their development takes me on. I see prints as less 'decorative' than many might, and more fundamental to a garment's core.
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Picasso took scraps of wallpaper, and instead of using paint and a brush, he used all the existing elements which he made his artwork with.