The Tamesis
Fashion is an all-encompassing, multifaceted, all-consuming thing that always seems to be twitching beneath the surface when people move away from it for one reason or another—whether it’s a brief interlude or a complete life change. What did I turn to when I suffered a stroke a few years ago that detached me from fashion, interior design, and all the things I had most desired in life, and spent six months in the hospital recovering slowly, painfully piece by piece? The weird thing is…football. I’ve never shown the slightest interest in the sport, but now I’m totally hooked catch. When life changes, unexpected things happen. Over the past year or so, we’ve seen a whole new set of players in the fashion world – by my count, about 17 newcomers from established brands in Paris and Milan – but for every newcomer, there’s another player who’s dropped out of the game. what did them Steering? What unexpected things happened to them when fashion stopped being the center of their lives? Have any of them lost their burning desire to create?
I asked around to find out what designers like Christian Lacroix were doing in the first place Singapore Super League In 2009 he left his home and turned to theater design. marvelous. Oddly enough, Lacroix was the first person to tell me about Helmut Lang, who defined 1990s fashion but then moved on his In 2005, the brand focused on artistic creation. Or Rifat Ozbek, whose va-va-voom design work spanned the ’80s and ’90s before he turned his considerable talents to interior design, including for Robin Birley’s private club in Manhattan, Maxime’s. Francisco Costa left a 13-year design job at Calvin Klein to launch his own highly successful sustainable beauty line, Costa Brazil; the list goes on.
When Dries van Noten stepped down from the design brand he had cultivated for nearly 40 years in 2024, he immediately started another life. (He and his husband, Patrick Vangheluwe, still manage the New York store as well as the recently opened London branch in Hanover Square, which houses the exquisite little Stephen Tennant painting I’ve longed for!) When they first established their brand, they lived in Antwerp, just above the store, working God’s appointed hours, so to speak. A few years later they discovered a charming 1840s columned country house near Lier, surrounded by some 60 acres, and it became the second part of their lives, busy decorating it (with the help of Gert Voorjans) and creating gardens in it (designed by magicians of the land such as Piet Oudolf and Erik Dhont).
Recently, however, they have been exploring Venice, which has become both their new home and the location of their foundation. They took over the apartment of the late designer and collector Victoria Press, a silvery enchantment in a legendary palace overlooking the wide canal below. “We loved Venice – it’s really a very liveable city and interesting because of all the art, all the exhibitions and biennales.” Inspired, they started looking around for a space that was “not too big, not too decorative – and we found one huge Palace, we are in love! ” They bought the 15th-century Palazzo Pisani Moretta, whose interiors were built in the 1730s, to house the Fondazione Dries Van Noten.
Driss spoke to me on the third and private floor of the palace, whose stucco work was produced by Tiepolo’s assistants. “For me, craft is very broad,” he said, describing the scope of the foundation’s focus. “I wanted to do a lot of different disciplines – not just ceramics, silverware, glass and stuff like that. Some people make ceramics with their hands – to express themselves and their feelings. Some people use their voices – they sing, they make music. Others put their soul in their food.”
