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When designer Dries Van Noten announced his retirement from his fashion brand in March of this year, there were literal tears at the Vogue office. We all checked on Virginia Smith, Vogue s global head of fashion, while simultaneously perusing the RealReal to see what pieces we could quickly snap up. So you can imagine my surprise—and delight—when I heard that the designer planned to stay on at the beauty arm of the brand.
Dries Van Noten Beauty is a collection of fragranced items (perfumes, soaps) and lipsticks housed in colorfully printed, embossed, and painted packaging.
“The beauty brand has the essence of what the fashion brand stands for,” the designer tells me over Zoom. “But in a way, it can be even more personal because it s something you are applying to your skin and feeling it react with your body.”
Today, Dries Van Noten Beauty launches its first collection since the designer left the fashion house: A quartet of perfumes. Each of the names—Bitter Splash, Vanille Camouflage, Crazy Basil, and Camomille Satin—harkens back to ingredients in the natural world, something the Van Noten finds continually inspiring. It should also be noted that the designer s Lier, Belgium garden, which was featured in Vogue s March 2014 issue, is the lush retreat of legends. “I see the world as my garden,” he says. “The garden I draw from is much bigger than just my own.” Of course, the packaging is refillable (as are the lipsticks).
When it comes to creating the fragrances, Van Noten says his favorite directive when working with perfumers is “surprise me.” It s from there that the most unusual, delightful scents flow. “I like when a perfume combines two different ingredients which you wouldn t associate automatically or a scent pushes certain notes much stronger than you normally would.”
That duality continues into the design of the bottles, which—as anticipated—Van Noten is happily very involved with. “A perfume is a contest of two elements, I also wanted the bottle itself to be a combination of two different elements,” he reflects.“I have to dress each scent,” he adds with a laugh. “That s where my skills as a fashion designer come in. I start to make associations between each perfume and colors, moods, with the masculine or feminine materials.”
Fragrance bottles on the vanity wearing custom Dries Van Noten. What could be more divine?
