Dries Van Noten was born in Antwerp on 12 May 1958 into a family of garment makers and traders: his grandfather was a tailor and his father owned a menswear shop. He graduated from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp in 1980 and freelanced for local designers before launching a menswear line in 1986.
That year he presented in London as one of the Antwerp Six, the group of Academy graduates who brought Belgian fashion to international attention. A small order from Barneys New York followed, and Louis Boston became one of the first American retailers to carry him. In 1989 he opened his first shop, Het Modepaleis, in Antwerp; Hong Kong and Tokyo followed, then Paris in 2007, decorated with antiques collected by Van Noten and his partner Patrick Vangheluwe, and Singapore. The label came to be carried by some 400 stores worldwide.
Van Noten's work is defined by print, colour, unusual fabrics and layering. The New York Times called him "one of fashion's most cerebral designers". His eclecticism fell out of step with the minimalism of the early 1990s and returned to favour by the mid-2000s, crowned by the CFDA International Award in 2008. He never offered haute couture and never advertised: "I don't like the idea of showing things that you don't sell in a store," he said in 2005. Every piece on his runway was made to be bought.
He dressed Cate Blanchett for the 2008 Academy Awards and on many occasions since; Queen Mathilde of Belgium and Maggie Gyllenhaal have also been clients. In 2014 the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris mounted an exhibition on his work and its influences, later shown in Antwerp, pairing 180 of his pieces with paintings, garments and film from other collections.
The house was privately owned, with Christine Mathys as co-founder and chief executive, until 2018, when the Spanish fragrance and fashion group Puig acquired a majority; Van Noten remained a minority shareholder. His farewell show, on 22 June 2024 in a former boiler factory on the edge of Paris, was not a retrospective. Guests received a silver-foil invitation bearing the single word "love", and models walked a river of silver leaf to David Bowie: utility jackets threaded with gold embroidery, trench coats in whisper-thin shimmering fabric, velvets and pixelated florals, with faces from his 1990s shows, Karen Elson among them, back on the runway. He bowed in his customary navy knit and chinos as a curtain fell to reveal a spinning disco ball. "My dream was to have a voice in fashion," he had written in announcing his retirement. "That dream came true." His partner Patrick Vangheluwe, the house's creative director, retired with him.
In December 2024 Julian Klausner, who had led the women's studio, was named creative director of both collections; Van Noten and Vangheluwe stayed on to oversee beauty, perfume and store design and to consult on the collections. Their next project is the Fondazione Dries Van Noten, a self-funded non-profit devoted to craft, housed in the fifteenth-century Palazzo Pisani Moretta on the Grand Canal, which he bought in May 2025 and which was due to open with its first presentation in April 2026. "Fashion lost its soul the moment it became an industry," he told Vogue.
He was made an Officer of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 2014 and in 2017 was granted the title of baron by King Philippe of Belgium. He lives with Vangheluwe outside Antwerp, where he keeps a celebrated garden, and divides his time with Venice.