A biography for Dries van Notenhasn’t been written yet.
“You'd think after 100 shows you'd be used to this, but it's not true for me. It always feels like the first show.”
“Fashion shows are really my way of communication.”
“I think in the same way when I'm cooking, when I'm gardening, when I'm choosing fabrics. It's a way of living.”
“My childhood was very, very, very, very traditional.”
“I look back on shows now that I thought were good, and I don't like them so much anymore. Or criticism I didn't understand or agree with now makes sense.”
“The garden is my second profession. It's 22 hectares, which is a big garden. I really need it, going from the flower garden, the shrubs and the trees, the vegetable garden, all these things.”
“My office looks very empty compared with my house. The house is completely crammed full with things that Patrick and I love. It's very eclectic. There are things that have no value but which we like. We have a lot of Belgian painters; we have international painters. We have nice things; we have ugly things. I don't want that things are predictable.”
“Change is not always bad. Change can be good.”
“For me personally, there's too much fashion around in this world.”
“I collect objects I fall in love with more than antiques per se. Value is not a criteria that attracts me to something.”
“Picasso took scraps of wallpaper, and instead of using paint and a brush, he used all the existing elements which he made his artwork with.”
“I like to choose my own way forward. I really do want to create something that I personally like a lot.”
“I'm a very big fan of winter-flowering shrubs and bulbs. You have the smell, you have the color - it's really like a present from God when something like that is in flower in the middle of the snow.”
“For me, a show is an event - something we work toward that focuses an idea.”
“In the design process, there's a need to be culturally comprehensive.”
“I was a kid at the end of the 1960s and in the early 1970s, so a lot of things changed. You had pop music coming up, with David Bowie, you had new television programmes and all these things. I was fascinated.”
“My morning routine varies by how much time I have. In the winter, I like to take baths, but in the summer, I prefer a good shower with some soap and then maybe some moisturizer afterward. I use D.R. Harris and Geo. F. Trumper products, which we also stock at our shops in Paris and Antwerp.”
“I'm part of the fashion system, but I don't want to follow all the rules. I don't want to be contrarian - I just want to do my own things, which are most honest and correct to do.”
“I have nothing against glamorous dressing.”
“I'm a fashion designer, not a shoe designer. I like to design clothes.”