On Wednesday, Julian Klausner will take a bow for the first time as Dries Van Noten’s creative director. The 33-year-old Belgian designer, who worked alongside the house’s founder on its womenswear collections since 2018, was appointed to the top seat in December. Van Noten stepped down last March after 30 years.
”We are preparing everything, packing all the boxes, doing the final touches,” Klausner says, speaking on Zoom from the DVN office in Antwerp a few days before the show, which will take place at the historic Opéra Garnier in Paris.
“I was able to know about the venue really early on in the process, which doesn’t always happen. It really influenced the collection very strongly,” he continues, citing the “power of costume” among sources of inspiration. “When I first fell in love with fashion, it was as a child with the costume box. I’m the youngest of four kids, so I had a very full and diverse costume box. The power of a costume and the history of the opera as a central point to culture and society were running through my mind.”
As he steps into Van Noten’s shoes, it’s clear he learned a lot from his mentor. When asked how the power of costume would translate in the collection, he replies: “I have always heard Dries say it’s very bad luck to talk about a collection before it’s shown.”
Born in Antwerp, Klausner grew up in Brussels. His parents’ home, crammed with art and architecture books, is just a stone’s throw away from La Cambre, the visual arts school. Many of La Cambre’s famous alumni, including Chanel’s Matthieu Blazy, Saint Laurent’s Anthony Vaccarello, Rabanne’s Julien Dossena and Courrèges’s Nicolas Di Felice, attended the school just a few years before Klausner. At age 13, he began going to the graduate shows, thanks to a friend of his older sister.
”I was really a sponge. It was the time of Style.com, and I was just trying to take it all in,” he says. At around 16 or 17, he developed an interest in conceptual designs like those by Martin Margiela and Helmut Lang. Then, he was introduced to the universe of Dries Van Noten. “I came to the Dries Van Noten store in Antwerp in my teenage years. That’s when I really started to think there’s something I’m really attracted to here.”
After graduating, he worked under John Galliano at Maison Margiela in Paris, an experience Klausner describes as “fashion heaven”. “What I learnt from John is really the storytelling, the absolute dedication and commitment to an idea and also the creative process. There is something almost ceremonial in how John works and how he does the fittings and this dedication to making something as perfect as possible.”
In 2018, Klausner heard from a friend that Van Noten was looking for a womenswear designer. “It was always very mysterious as a house. Even though I’m from Belgium, I never knew anybody who worked here. I always heard that people worked there for many years,” he explains. (The knitwear designer, for instance, has been working there for 28 years.) Klausner was intrigued by the opportunity and charmed when he met the founder and his partner Patrick Vangheluwe. “I understood it was a very small team and I would work very closely with Dries and I liked it. I liked the office and I liked the atmosphere. I said, ‘OK, let’s do it.’”
Seven years after he joined, Van Noten decided it was time to retire. “When I was told Dries was stepping down, in the same conversation, I was asked if I would consider applying for the role. I barely had to think about it for a few seconds before saying yes,” he recalls. Then, Klausner went through a “proper process”. “ It was also important for me because I wanted to feel like if I get this position, I want to feel legitimate. It was so familiar for me working for Dries, making the connections for him, with him, that I had to get out of his point of view and get into my point of view and really think about my personal vision for the brand. I’m really excited to see some of the things that I was thinking of come to life.”
It was also about moving from being a colleague to being the one who leads the way. “I was open to any kind of reaction [from the team]. I’m very grateful for their support. They have taken me on board in a great way. When Dries stepped down, there were of course interrogations, doubts about what could happen. I don’t wanna speak for them, but I think it feels quite reassuring that it’s me from inside and it stays in the family.”
Since being promoted, Klausner says he looks “at the bigger picture”. He assumes responsibility for womenswear and, for the first time, he’ll design menswear, too. Dries Van Noten has an advisory role on beauty and the design of the retail stores, with Klausner slowly getting involved in those aspects. Now that Klausner oversees the brand image, he’s eager to evolve digital communications.
He is taking over at a challenging time — fashion is facing a downturn. Dries Van Noten, which has been owned by Spanish beauty and fashion conglomerate Puig since 2018, is proving resilient. The brand, which sits in Puig’s “niche brands” division, reported double-digit growth in 2024, according to the group’s annual earnings statement, though the company doesn’t break out individual brand sales.
Like in all successions, there’s the question of where to position the cursor between aesthetic continuation and disruption. Klausner is unfazed: “Dries was never afraid of aesthetic disruption. He was always encouraging us to propose something unexpected, to challenge him with a certain direction. So I don’t really see it as 35 years of one aesthetic and that now I can do something different. Bringing in a different story season after season is very much a part of the DNA here.”
He feels strongly about the codes of the house, including the love of craft, embroideries, textiles and the world of interior. He also stresses the interaction between men’s and women’s collections. “Sometimes, they balance each other out; sometimes, they influence each other. It’s still something that I need to go through and I’m looking forward to June [his debut menswear show].”
The spring 2025 show in September was done by the studio, including Klausner as head of womenswear. He hadn’t been appointed to the creative helm at that point so he didn’t treat it as his first show. Instead, he chose a very collaborative approach where he asked the studio team to pitch ideas, things they have been willing to do. “And then at a certain moment I said: ‘OK guys, we cannot do only things that Dries said no to,’” he added with a laugh.
On Monday, I met Klausner in-person during fittings at DVN’s Paris showroom as photographer Ulrich Knoblauch takes photos for Vogue. The designer walked me through the collection that features a color palette of deep, rich jewel tones, historical details, contemporary tailoring and subtle references to the world of dance. It’s fitting: Klausner loves theater, dance, performance and exhibitions. “It’s always a source of inspiration. A lot of what I do ultimately is somehow linked to my work. But I like to cook. I’m a talkative person — maybe you can tell — so if I want to unwind, I see my friends and I have nice long conversations,” he tells me. What about gardening? Van Noten’s home is set in 55-acre grounds in the countryside and his love of flowers famously fueled his collections and perfumes. “Not for now. The job didn’t come with a garden.”
Before his debut show, Van Noten offered Klausner a key piece of advice: “Enjoy it.” “Things might go wrong, and I might look at it and regret some things, but you only have one first show. So enjoy and try to stay calm and stay focused.”
