After every runway show by the Belgian brand, it feels as if all possible positive adjectives have already been used, leaving us wondering how we may describe what is yet to come without sounding like a broken record, yet each collection has been done so superbly that words and emotions just flow without the need to even think or process them. Speaking directly from his heart to ours, Julian Klausner teaches us this season what glamour can be, but don’t think about the extravagant, the artificial or the forced. Think about the innocent, the personal, the joyful. For Dries Van Noten, the glam is in the tiny spark that makes us feel alive.
Julian has the same gift as Dries, putting all sorts of things together, no matter the colour, the texture, the motif or the material, and always, without fail, making it work. This effortless precision that characterises the Belgian brand so well follows this season’s intention of understanding and portraying glamour in a very innocent and spontaneous way. Let’s mix and match what we have in our wardrobe and hope for the best. This childlike yet not childish attitude accompanies our daily attire decisions throughout our lives, even if we don’t realise it, when we decide to risk it all with a colour outside our usual palette, maybe putting on a bold lipstick or adding a floral accessory to an otherwise plain fit. We may now be totally unaware of this joy and whimsy in the act of dressing that inhabits our hearts, but we can always blindly trust Dries Van Noten to remind us of how alive clothes can make us feel.
With such pure intentions, nothing but beauty can emerge, a natural beauty on top of that. Natural doesn’t have to mean rejecting ornament and details and becoming a blank canvas; on the contrary, natural can also mean following our hearts and instincts, trusting what they tell us glamour can be. It is a feeling and a state of mind more than anything that can be precisely defined or boxed: one woman can feel glamorous after going all out preparing for a night out, and another can feel at their most captivating wearing an oversized garment with a full face of make-up. Julian knows perfectly well how to design for all.
As wide and subjective as the definition of glamour is, so are the possibilities for translating it into techniques, silhouettes, patterns and garment typologies that try to materialise all of these different meanings. Since this collection is constructed with a naive, unpretentious approach, there’s no need to search deep into our consciousness or become too performative when thinking about what glam can be for us. Classic films and their protagonists are a no-brainer, for example, and everything they entail is a big inspiration for S/S 2027.
The literal and the nuanced: in this collection, there’s space for all, and all works just as well. On one hand, there’s no doubt that vintage cinema posters were way more alluring and dazzling than the current ones. If we wear these posters, will we become just as alluring and dazzling ourselves? Absolutely. You can try them on as dresses, skirts, coats or shirts. Now, if the desire is to be more subtle, we can always imitate the effortlessly chic way of dressing of Hollywood’s Golden Age: popped collars on blazers and shirts, draped necklines and pussy bows, floral brooches on knitted cardigans or layered basics in those high-quality materials that were the norm in the past.
And because glamour is not just a thing from the past, currently trendy yet timeless garments such as leather jackets or trench coats, and elements like the bright colour palettes ever-present nowadays or statement bags and footwear, are passed through the DVN filter of print and colour to maximise the joy a piece of clothing can contain.
In the press release talking about the creation of the fictional movie posters we mentioned earlier, Julian refers to them as “A worldwide premiere, in full technicolour”, and the fascination with this hypnotising, much-missed technique of colour processing, now long gone, represents a good analogy to what we find collection after collection in the Belgian brand. Technicolor was a sign of its time, an almost magical, impossible-to-replicate occurrence that made hundreds dream through their screens about a more colourful, vibrant and magical world. Dries Van Noten is the Technicolor of our generation.
