Text for ‘The Conversation’: Dries Van Noten retires: Belgian fashion genius melded print, pattern, colour and bold ideas

Acclaimed Belgian fashion designer Dries Van Noten has retired at 66, after announcing earlier this year that he would step down after his Paris Fashion Week menswear show in June. It brings to a close a groundbreaking career of almost 40 years.

Celebrated for his eclectic combinations of high and low-culture prints and patterns, such as a Francis Bacon-inspired collection, and oversized pop-prints of Marilyn Monroe, Van Noten taught an entire generation how to work boldly with colour and ideas.

His designs were an almost impossibly coordinated blend of avant-garde aesthetics and practical wearability, often featuring an inexplicably harmonious hodgepodge of cultural references and historical allusions. From referencing Italian poet Gabriele D'Annunzio to taking inspiration from Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece A Clockwork Orange, the Belgian designer managed always to create intellectually stimulating and visually captivating clothing-as-art.

Born in Antwerp in 1958, Van Noten was the third generation in a family of tailors. His early exposure to fashion and textiles inspired him to enroll in the fashion design course at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Belgium, a prestigious institution that has shaped a raft of influential designers.