Time_Sensitive_Dries_Van_Noten_on_the_Meaning_Found_in_Making

0:02For me beauty is something what we need can be the sun hitting something in your bedroom the moment you open your eyes and you say like wow I have already seen enough beauty for today That gives me enough energy to get through the ugly world beauty can hurt beauty can shock beauty can be evolving beauty can surprise Hey everyone on this week's episode our latest site specific conversation and the final episode of season 13 A joint Dries van Noten in Venice, Italy, inside his recently established eponymous foundation there. Set within the historic Palazzo Pisani Moreta on the Grand Canal, the Fondazio Ne Dries van Noten embodies a vital new phase of Dries's life following his nearly four-decade long journey in fashion, defined by a singular commitment to beauty, craftsmanship, and the enduring value of the handmade.

1:24Recorded inside his office within the 15th century Palazzo, our conversation centers on what comes after building one of fashion's most admired independent houses. Since stepping away from the fashion industry, Dries' turned his attention toward creating a cultural institution dedicated to craft in its broadest sense. One that brings together artists, designers, makers, and thinkers across disciplines and generations.

1:52For him, the boundaries between art, design, and craft have never especially mattered. What's most meaningful is the presence of the human hand and the human spirit, the variation, the chance, the emotion. Fittingly, the foundation's inaugural exhibition titled The Only True Protest is Beauty unfolds across 20 rooms and reflects many of the ideas that have animated Dries' life's work.

2:18On the episode, among many things, we talk about beauty as an essential force that can surprise, unsettle, and even sustain us. The importance of preserving endangered forms of knowledge and skill, and Dries's conviction that in our frenzied, fragmented world, craft can be a gateway to greater meaning and human connection. He also considers his own lifelong fascination with making. From growing up in a family of retailers and tailors and Antwerp, To his formative years as a member of the famed avant-garde group of Belgian fashion designers, the Antwerp 6, to early career trips to Japan that revealed the power of a complete creative vision, one where every detail mattered. To collaborations with artisans in India, and ultimately to his 129 runway shows, through which he established his deeply personal visual language.

3:13Looking back on the season, I've taken note of how many of these conversations have, in one way or another, been about the building of worlds where ideas can live and evolve, whether a museum, a room for deep listening, or a digital space for a community of readers. In Venice, Dries is doing something similar, creating a home for preserving, celebrating, and advancing the human act of making.

3:38This conversation with him feels like a fitting place to pause before we return with season 14 in September. The foundation he's leading is not only a new chapter after fashion. It's a long-view act of stewardship, attention, and care. Before we get into the episode, I'd first like to thank our season 13 presenting partner, Lakho, School of Jewelry Arts, which is supported by the Mason Van Cleef and our pells.

4:06with the mission of sharing the art and culture of jewelry with the general public. Nicole offers everything from courses on art history and introductory jewelry making and gemology to in-person and online talks, from books and exhibitions to its podcast Voice of Jules. Founded in 2012, Nicole operates from permanent campuses in Paris, Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Dubai, and hosts various traveling events around the world.

4:33With programming that revolves around three main themes, Sava Faire, the history of jewelry, and the universe of gemstones, Lakul is a verifiable goldmine when it comes to the art, craft, and scholarship of jewelry. Among Lakul's various courses are a guide to Japanese arushi lacquer techniques, a study of gouache painting and high jewelry, and even a program titled from the chef to the master jeweler, a full-day workshop involving a morning cooking class, a lunch and tasting of petisseries by Francois Paris, the pastry chef at the Ritz Paris, and in the afternoon, a lesson on jeweler's techniques. Kids courses for six to eleven year olds include from aspiring jeweler to little pastry chef and make your own treasure chest, and there are also offerings for teenagers to discover the world of gems or the art of designing jewels.

5:27You can learn more about LeCole and its current and upcoming offerings at LeColevanCleafOurPels.com. That's Ellie C-O-L-E-V-A-N-C-L-E-E-E-F-A-R-P-E-L-S.com. And now, here's my conversation with Dries. Hi, Dries. It's a pleasure to be here in Venice with you and thanks for letting our team into your space. Really welcome here, Venice. Let's start with this Palazzo itself.

6:07Tell me a bit of its history and how did you come to acquire it? Oh, it's quite a history. So my partner and I, when we retired as fashion designers of our brand, we really wanted to start our foundation, but not in Belgium because we lived our whole life in Belgium and I think for a new life it would be also more interesting and more drastic to move country also. First we talked about Rome or Florence.

6:37because we always thought that Venice was too much, too much things happening and too much tourists. Until by coincidence we arrived in Venice we could stay in an apartment of a friend for two weeks and we discovered a completely different city. A lot of young people, very good schools, a lot of things happening and bubbling, new co-working spaces, a lot of tourists but also very passionate and fantastic Phoenicians.

7:04Italian and international Phoenicians were very open and really invite you to their house. For an aperitivo, you presented to other people. We really fell in love with Venice. So we decided, okay, the place is going to be Venice. And then we were looking for a space which was not too big, not too complicated and not too decorated. Because for a fondation, of course, you want white walls or white cube.

7:32We looked around to industrial spaces in Canareggio and Castello, those places more. But then we didn't really find what we wanted. And then one of the brokers, which we worked with, said, like, what do you mean? And you go to Pizani Moreta, said, like, forget it's far too big. And then it's like too decorated and everything. Yeah, this place is 43,000 square feet. Yeah, it's kind of, it's quite generous, let's say. And then we discovered kind of a beautiful Palazzo in...

8:02good condition, which is also, of course, important in Venice. We fell in love with the owner. He is an incredible guy. 83 years old. The Palazzo is 400 years in the same family. He really gave his life, in fact, restoring the Palazzo to keep it up in perfect condition and everything. First, it became clear that maybe to do a foundation about craftsmanship, that this Palazzo would be the perfect backdrop because Everything is done here in such an incredible way. And this 18th century aristocrat Kiarra Pesani herself was a craft collector. A very craft mine. So because the Palazzo dates from 1480 was sold to the Pesani family in 1650, inherited by Kiarra Pesani in 1730, 1725 or 30. She decided to...

8:56to rebuild it kind of. She kept the facade. She added the staircase in Rocco style. And she invited the best craftsman of Venice to decorate a full palette. So she added also two floors on top. So the size is because of her. The craftsman in fact did really marvelous things here. The marble, the doors, all the bronze and the brass details.

9:19The chandeliers, all-briati, the best, it's really the best people who worked here and that's fantastic, of course. Do you have any early life memories of Venice? Like, do you remember your first trip coming here? Yeah, I think like everybody, so I think I went, I came in Venice the first time, I think with school, school trip, like in Belgium, you had kind of the habit that you have to do kind of...

9:45when you're 17 you go on a trip through Italy and visit kind of the most important cities I think that was kind of one day Venice so it's not really kind of a good introduction But then afterwards I came, I think like everybody, like every one or two years for two or three days to Venice, to see the Biennale, to see some exhibitions, things like that. But of course, when you come to Venice and you stay in a hotel, it's a complete different city. Now, when you live here, you go to the markets, you go to all those fantastic shops, who sell the best products and the butcher and the bakery and all those.

10:22Different life. Yeah, since you've moved here. What is your pace or ritual or how is time shifted for you? Have you found time different honestly? It's quite busy Because of course buying a palette so has also some sequences and we did the big commitment here in Venice because we didn't only buy the Palazzo maybe can tell now already, is that the negotiations about the plaza took quite a long time because the lawyer of the family was super complicated. I think if you would have worked directly with the family, it would have been done in two months. But there was the lawyer, and he really wanted to make our life difficult. So after six months we stopped the negotiations, we said, let's not gonna happen.

11:04And by coincidence, that week, another property came for sale and I jumped on it and I immediately bought it. The Monday that we signed, we get a phone call from the family to say, like, look, we want to negotiate again.

11:19So you have it with two bullets? No, it's not a Palazzo. It's another space, which is also a nice size. And it's kind of the basement, the ground floor, the ground floor of Palazzo, which was always used as a studio and kind of a more industrial look, but still with Byzantine columns and a beautiful view on the canal and everything. And this we are restoring now. So when we close the Palazzo for...

11:46the restoration, what we're going to do. It's not really restoration. It's really we have to put some techniques in your elevator, these type of things. Then we move there. So the pallads will be closed for one year and then we are in the studio, some polo as we call it. It's just around the corner. So you'll have two locations. We are going to have two locations, which is good. The pallads are very decorated and then the other one is just going to be like a very simple concrete floor, like a project space.

12:12And I know to make the updates here is complicated. It's going to take time. So I found it interesting that you decided before you do that, open it up to the public to let the public in here and experience it before you did the, I guess, let's back of house recommendations. Several several reasons. In fact, because I'm, of course, quite impatient and also knowing that if it would have to start to work.

12:37we needed anyway one year after we acquired it to do the plans, permissions, dotterizations, things like that, all those type of things. So we knew that it would take a year and then when we bought it, we also took over the contract, what the owner made because he used it quite often as kind of a venue for events. So until March, anyway.

13:02There were events, so we couldn't start the work. So that gave us that gap of like five months. But I said, okay, how are we going to fill it in? Continue events, I said this definitely not. So that's why don't we do an exhibition. And also, we said like it's a perfect kind of a tryout. We're going to learn so much and we did. We're going to learn so much of, in fact, what is, how can we use this space? What are...

13:27How do I have to treat it when we put art in it in beautiful pieces of craftsmanship? How can this kind of disgust or kind of a narrative with a Palazzo around it and things like that? I really admire that because I feel like a lot of foundations, they spend so much fun and time defining what they're going to be and you're sort of letting it become. No, it's also in this way because we didn't really have time.

13:55to build our network. So we said okay we concentrate then first six months really on building the exhibition and then during the exhibition we kind of start to work with our network to see what is going to be the future because of course now we have here this exhibition but I don't know that the resource is what we have. If it's more interesting to spend it on more kind of education, is it more kind of established designers with young designers, is it more kind of artistic residents, all those things, or is it a mixture of all those things? So we will see. Well, tell me about this first exhibition titled The Only True Protest Is Beauty. This was after a song by the political activist Phil Ox. What does this phrase mean to you?

14:40The only true protest is beauty. The full sentence is in such ugly times the only true protest is beauty. When I started to work on the idea of an exhibition that happened already I think beginning last year. I thought like okay it's a perfect working title. I saw it passing by somewhere on social media, the phrase. And I thought like it's a perfect kind of starting point for an exhibition for me.

15:04We started to work on it and I said like the moment that we're going to put up the exhibition, the world is going to be a much better place. So I kind of changed the title in something more neutral. I couldn't have known that it was even more relevant now than when I started to work on it.

15:22The only thing we did we dropped the first part of the sentence because for me I said like I don't want to work here six months again when the exhibition is open on something which is so negative and to be reminded every day what the bad plays the world is for the moment. I think that when you have the sentence and you have the word protest in it, you know that you protest against something. So I think for me it was clear with just like the second part of the sentence.

15:49What's your personal definition of beauty? What does beauty mean to you? What I appreciate about beauty is that it's something deeply personal. It's really, I think, what's beautiful for me is not beautiful for you. And beauty also has an evolution. For me, beauty can be kind of nearly the opposite of prettiness. And for a lot of people beauty is prettiness. As well, it's cute, it's nice.

16:14cabayee, all those things. No, for me beauty is something that we need. Can be the sun. Hitting something in your bedroom, the moment you open your eyes and you say like, wow, I have already seen enough beauty for today. That gives me enough energy to get through the ugly world. It's a lot of things for me. It's also something which is you have to work.

16:39the concept of beauty because I think your life is getting much more interesting when you work on beauty and that you let it evolve. Beauty can hurt, beauty can shock, beauty can maybe be revolting, beauty can surprise, it's all two different things. So across 20 rooms you're showing this constellation of more than 200 crafts people or pieces works. Everything from furniture by Misha Khan and Atori Sotsas to Pisani Mareta family's historic glassworks collection through to contemporary makers. What was your curatorial process? How did how did you bring this assemblage together? It happened all quite in an organic way.

17:25So of course, first thing we knew that the Palazzo would play a role in the whole exhibition. Secondly, also I never made a difference between art and craft. And I think that's also going to be a little bit a role of the fondatione. So for us now, I think for me the difference is much more that you have on one thing which is made by humans, made by people who work, who think, who use their brain, their soul, their hands to create things.

17:53where there is space for kind of coincidence, creativity, inspiration. That is one thing for me and then on the other side you have AI. So where everything is really made for following a formula and I think the formula is the opposite of creativity. And that was kind of the first start to work with. Then of course, knowing this, that for me there is no difference between art and craftsmanship.

18:19I said, okay, I want to have fashion because I'm still a fashion designer in my soul. I want fashion but not my own. And then we said, okay, the kind of, quite a lot of old loves, like things which I saw somewhere and that I remember, I have a very visual memory. And I went back then, okay, I saw somewhere kind of the big pictures of Steven Scheer, which I really loved. And I started to make kind of compositions. The moment we had kind of 50% of the elements, then I started to install them kind of in the room. I started to make the collages room by room and then I started to add things also to see that we have all the different disciplines kind of going from woven artworks to braided, crocheted, glass in all different aspects, metal ceramics in all different aspects that really had a very wide group of people and then also of course the established designers.

19:17but also kind of the people who just came out of school for last year. Yeah, and you've always had this great respect for the past, but not in a nostalgic way. Would you say that's reflected in this show, this sort of forward-looking element of craft? I really hope so. I think there is what I'm the most happy with when people walk through it. They don't make any difference anymore between kind of an art work of a famous artist or kind of a natural resource as piece of furniture.

19:46or William El Jadok, Chandaleer, which is hanging there, which is kind of a few old garden chairs, wronged together, with some stoppers from wine caravans and some dogmasks. And for them, now, placed here in the Paladso, I'm happy that people think it makes sense. It's not like alien elements put together, but there is really kind of a narrative. And people are very open to that. And this, for me, is very happy surprise. Yeah, I think what...

20:15creates or comes out of that as a sort of atmosphere that extends even beyond the pull-out. So there's a sort of alchemy happening, I would say, between the works themselves and the space they're situated in. So this was really kind of, yeah, okay, it was a tryout. We didn't know the space very well. Some people are surprised that everything is so dark. So it's dark in two ways. First of all, there is an undercurrent of mementomori, vanitas, And there is a lot of kind of, oh, we poor human beings, we are rotting here on earth. And then beauty is escaping from us for return alive and the better flies everything. So there are a lot of skulls, there is a lot of these type of things. There is kind of a lot of decay also in some clothes from Christian Lacquois, which kind of visually fall apart.

21:07Combined with Peter Buegenau's sculptures, we're kind of rotting away with covered with blood and horse hair. So you have kind of that quite dark mood. But on the other hand it's also presented in quite dark circumstances, because we covered all the windows of the Palazzo with film, which takes 95% of the strength of light away. And we had simply to do that, because as you show fashion, the maximum...

21:32quantity of light what you can show in fashion is 50 looks so it's just very low so we had to put the whole palette so we kind of a dark atmosphere in my research for today I came across this interview that you gave about a decade ago in which you said that art has always been a part of your research but quote more in a poetic emotional way in the case of this exhibition How does that come alive for you, this idea of the emotional? Like how did you decide what to include, what to leave out? Was it, was a lot of this curated through an emotional lens for you?

22:07It's of course, emotions for me is always like one of the reason why I select a piece or not. So it has to talk to me, it has to surprise me, it has to shock me, definitely. On the other hand, you want also to make a complete story. It's not that you have also the rational part, then who says like, okay, now we have this, so we need something kind of contrasting there to make this thing speak in a more interesting way together. Because...

22:35I'm quite quickly bored. So for me, the tension between pieces is very important to create that and to avoid that in fact. The narrative was important. That was really kind of at a certain moment the narrative took over and it's not that I said okay now because they fit in the narrative. Let's take this and this piece, not at all.

22:57But if you do a story about wood, for me, you had princes and the chandelier, which I talked already about with, and the garden chairs and pieces of wood and things like that. But then you have Sotsas, an incredible cabinet from the 80s or 90s, it was 90s. And then you have Yoris Larman, the chairs, which for me are also quite symbolic there, because you have those chairs standing there, made with all the most advanced techniques, kind of with...

23:243D printing laser cutting everything, what you would say, like, oh, is this craft? But then they are done after all those pieces which are cut out of wood are put together in a way which is absolutely beyond craftsmanship. It's incredible how it's made. For me it's important that, because when people think about craftsmanship very often they think, okay, we go two centuries back and we use only like kind of very primitive material and that's the real craftsmanship. No, not at all.

23:51I think computers and everybody will send emails and make digital pictures. How beautiful then also vinyl records are and things like that. But we listen to kind of podcasts while we are making craftsmanship. Exactly. This emotional, this was something I feel like. And just the idea of craft was so embedded in the work you did in fashion over the 38-year career.

24:17And I think so much of what could be felt in your work was the feeling of the maker. And so I wanted to ask through this exhibition, are you thinking about not just the hand of the maker, but the feeling of the maker?

24:31I mean, obviously you're having your emotional response to it, but maybe the maker's emotion as extended into it as well. No, of course, I think when you're interested in craftsmanship and when you don't really want just to make kind of machine-made pieces, automatically you feel the hands of the maker. I think that's the beauty of it.

24:49The hand of the maker also sees that every piece is kind of in its very unique, because there is always some irregularities. There is always something that you see that I talked already about coincidence, which for me is such an important factor in creativity. Everybody knows that when you make things at a certain moment, It's more interesting to stop because you know but continuing to work on it is not going to make it better and so you have like the most famous sculptures from the biggest artists from the past where it's like a piece of rock where then only one leg is sculpted out and that's the most strong things but I think I compare it also because a lot of creativity I compare with making food cooking. I love cooking and I think also I think like Neil everybody who loves cooking you start with a recipe

25:37And then you look for the ingredients, and the one of the ingredients you don't find, and there it starts, and you start to change, and then you say like, oh, cooking so long. No, no, I'm not going to cook it so long. I can cook it shorter, higher temperature, and things like that. And then at a certain moment you go in and also comes in and don't, oh, I still have this, let's throw this one, because I think it's going to give a good result. So that's how you cook. No, I think I know anybody who really, when you have a recipe, follows it from the beginning until the end.

26:06So, and that's a little bit the same thing with making things for me. It's really very symbolic. So now that the exhibition's been on view for about a month, I wanted to ask, what's the response been like? Have you been surprised by the reactions? Yes, I've been surprised by the reactions. Of course, everybody, the whole team was hoping for good results and that people would love it and things like that.

26:30but the scenes what we had here during the opening of the week were not prepared for. So my excuses to everybody was standing here outside in the Kali and couldn't get in, but we were simply not ready for kind of, because of course the Palazzo is a very fragile building. So we can't have hundreds of people at the same time in the building. So it's limited, also security wise, that's no problem because you've seen the staircase, we have a good staircase to escape, but it's It's just that for the fragility and there are also some small rooms in the 20 rooms, there are two, three rooms which are very, very not really big. So we just had the maximum capacity. But of course also what is most giving really a joy is reactions on it. The thing what we, the sparkles, what we have now for the future that we see the reactions are good. I think also for us it's going to be easier after the success now of this exhibition.

27:29to move forward because people know what we are standing for. Because that was quite often our difficulty. Where we had to contact the galleries and artists, we had to explain the project and it said like, yeah, but we liked what you do as a designer, but you're a fashion designer. How are you going to do now something with art? You're serious.

27:49And then also, and what is exactly that you're going to do? Is there another place in the world somewhere that you can say it's going to be something like that? I said no, I don't think so. There is nobody who does something like this, mix all those elements in a Palazzo. So, you have to trust me. And then, okay, I think it's going to be easier now in the future to reach out to people and to get things done. Hey everyone, taking a quick break here to tell you a little bit about our season 13 presenting partner.

28:21L'Cole School of Jewelry Arts, which is supported by the Mason Van Cleef and our pells. Founded in 2012, L'Cole operates from permanent campuses in Paris, Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Dubai, and hosts various traveling events around the world, with programming that revolves around three main themes, Sava Faire, the history of jewelry, and the universe of gemstones. In addition to its courses, lectures, publications, and other programming, LeCole also produces a podcast called Voice of Jewels, which draws on knowledge from its lecturers, researchers, and other experts to uncover the stories and secrets behind history's most fascinating jewels. You can learn more about LeCole and its current and upcoming offerings at LeColeVancleafArtPels.com. That's Ellie C-O-L-E-V-A-N-C-L-E-E-F-A-R-P-E-L-S.com.

29:19and now back to the episode. For those who know your work in fashion though they know that you were never really truly a part of the system in that way. You really worked your own independent path that was separate. What do you hope people walk away from the exhibition feeling or thinking or what do you hope they're reflecting on as they leave the exhibition?

29:53The reactions are very, very positive and I really, exactly what I was hoping for. People are kind of quite silent when they come out. Thinking, thinking about a lot of things, discovering, very grateful. Okay, it sounds maybe a little bit like, oh, we did a great job. No, it's really, it surprises me. The reactions of people when they come out, when they did the whole walk through the exhibition, how they are often emotional and discovered something, what they...

30:22Lost maybe. And I think everybody, at least for maybe half a day, looks to the world in a different way. I love that. I mean, I think that's what great exhibitions should do, a great art or craft should do. Change your perspective. I've always thought that if you understand how something's made or engage with an object in that way, everything else around you becomes much more illuminated.

30:50Though for me one of the most magical moments was that one of the opening days, we did several openings days because we wanted to invite a lot of people. After the opening, I walked through the exhibition again like, oh, looking around because everything was last minute, so I just wanted to look again in a quiet way to what we've done.

31:15And I find on a staircase three young guys who were kind of people who were serving at the opening party. And I said, can I ask you something? Can we look at the exhibition? I said, of course, come, I give you a tour. And I show you. I showed them around because it was so for me it was really like, oh, we want to do it really to show young people in fact what craftsmanship is and things like that. And then I continued to talk with them and I said like, And he said, yes, I'm studying pattern making at the Fashion School in Pardova. Another one was a art student here in Venice. And the other one was studying something hotel, type of thing, and polymoda. And he said, like, can you give us an advice for the future? I said, yeah, always follow your heart. And then the guy said, oh, yes, indeed, pull this t-shirt down. He said, like, look, I have a tattoo. Follow my heart.

32:10It's moments like this that I said, okay, this gives me energy to continue for a year. Well, touching on your fashion exit, I guess, you could say, you said fashion was an addiction and much as you love it, that it could be too much at times.

32:27You've also said that leaving it for this new chapter hasn't actually been all that difficult so I wanted to ask is crafter in a sense this atmosphere we were talking about earlier is this kind of a continuation for you do you see like what through line do you see between how you're spending your time now and how you were spending it a few years ago I think of course there are quite a lot of points in common and I wouldn't have been able to do this out of the blue without my education what I had as a fashion designer for 40 years. So a lot of my knowledge and a lot of my experience you see coming through now in this exhibition. Also my eye, my taste, everything was shaped by all the people who I met. So my studio was always like a very young team. So we were known that I think that's in fashion.

33:19after that age of our studio was always like 28 or 29 years old. I need young people around me. I need the viewpoint of young people they have to surprise me, to shock me, to explain me, to teach me. It's maybe also kind of not really selfish, but it was also out of the needs because when people started to know that Patrick and I were going to retire, they said, oh, it's great because you're going to have so much time.

33:45for the garden and for the plants. And I said, Patrick, don't do that to me. I don't want to be the constantly with 70-year-old gardeners talking about pruning and fertilizers and things like that. No, no, no. So we need to find something that, again, I can have young people around me. And it works because the openings week we had all those young makers here, and it was a fantastic atmosphere.

34:10Well, I want to turn to your upbringing. You were born in 1958, the last of four children. And you were born into this line of retailers and tailors. Your grandfather founded what was once, if I have this correct, pretty much the only quality men's shop in Antwerp. And your mother ran a Cassandra fashion franchise. Your dad had also sort of taken over the business and opened his own shops.

34:38So you grew up working in the store surrounded by clothes, surrounded by fashion. Could you talk about that experience, how it shaped your views on craft, in particular? For me, of course, in that time, I didn't really make a difference between machine-made craft and all those things. For me, it was just things, it was a magical world, which I was a part of, and that I could look at and experience.

35:04Because indeed I loved fashion so I was 14 when I saw my first fashion show 14 14 yes, I thought it was fantastic and from 16 on I was my father gave Twice or three times a year in his tour kind of a fashion show where it was already involved by helping, choosing the music, things like that. So I always had a lot of fun with all those things. So for me it was like a very strange childhood maybe and growing up in the middle of all those things. But I think I was 16 or 17 the moment that really because the fashion business of my father was growing really fast.

35:39So that I got a responsibility for buying collections for the children's department and the boutique department. So I took the train and went to Brussels to the showrooms and to all the things. So for me it was always like normal thing. So going to fashion school was also the idea to continue the business of my father.

35:59But unfortunately very quickly I discovered that making fashion is much more fun than only buying and selling it. So I went to my father I think after a few months in fashion school and I said like okay sorry that but I'm not going to take over the family business. And he was quite angry and he said like okay but then you can earn your own money and not going to pay for your studies anymore. So in fact in that way and that was really very good for me because I had to earn my money.

36:29and I immediately, because of the contacts which I had with all the manufacturers, I was able to design some collections for them to earn money. Were there any objects or experiences related to craft that stand out to you from your youth? Were there things in the home or in your father's shops that you recall that were meaningful to you from a sort of craftsmanship perspective?

36:56My parents were always very attentive to how things were made. Strangely enough, in the family, both from the side of my father and my mother, they never bought furniture which was ready made. All furniture in the houses, I moved a lot in my youth, I moved several times houses. All the furniture was always made to measure.

37:21and I loved to go with my parents to go to the workshop to see how the covers were made and the chairs and everything was made. Everything was always designed. My mother also had always like a lot of attention to dressing the table, the porcelain, the glasses, how the glasses were made, the lace tablecloths because she loved the lace and she had kind of a beautiful collection of that.

37:47Before we could start to each, he started to describe, look, this is embroidered by the nuns in that cloister, in that here, and it was like this, and it's like this. So it's part of our education. Yeah, it almost like Osmos is for you, just like, you know, you were breathing and... Yeah, absolutely. As you mentioned, you went fashion school to study fashion at the Antroproil Academy in 1976, and it was there that you would meet all these other designers that formed this group.

38:16the Antwerp 6, as you were called, you've likened this to, quote, one big creative soup. Yeah. So looking back, what do you make of the Antwerp 6 time? And do you see that spirit alive here at the foundation in some way? This creative soup. I think creative soup for me is always the most inspiring because I told you already before, I'm bored quite quickly. So I have to move forward constantly.

38:46Because my biggest fear, in fact, always, is to arrive. My goodness, I can't imagine that you say, now, now I arrived, and now I'm not going to do things anymore. It's like I just want to continue until I can't anymore to discover, to move forward, to question the constant state of departure. Yes. No, but I think that gives me the energy. But I think it's also working on fashion.

39:15in the late 70s, in Belgium, a country which was, I think, the country was known for quality, but definitely not for fashion. Because you have to see, we've creatively, we've been as a group growing up in a time that was just the end of Odkutur. It was the beginning of Italian fashion, so when you think about Armani and Versace, which was revolution in fashion, leather menswear, linen menswear for women, Things like that were not really done before. That was 7576, and I started to study in 1976. Then immediately after you had a French creator, you had Montagne, Mugleur, François and Revie, all those incredible names. Immediately afterwards, one year later, you had Punk. You had Vivian Westwood. Then you had, immediately, like, 1980, Com De Garçon, first fashion show, your GMM motto in Paris. Then you had some Spanish designers.

40:13In this time, five, six years, you had one revolution after the other. When I explained that to young people in fashion, they say, like, yes, the last 20 years, we didn't even had one shift like that, except like the arrival of the big groups, but that's the only shift and that's not the best shift, maybe what fashion could make. But it gives a creative impulse. We still feel that now, in our way that we look to things.

40:42And do you think about some of the support you had, whether it was through the school, through this group, through other people who were around you that helped build your profile early on? Is that something you're hoping you can do here with this foundation, with different craft people, makers, designers?

41:04I told you already that we are trying now to see what's going to be the best thing to do for the foundation and also, again, here. So I'm a very curious person. So we're going to do all sorts of things with music next week. We're going to have kind of a presentation of a guy from Barcelona who does really beautiful ceramics. But we combined it then with young wine makers from the Veneto.

41:31So okay, you have to offer a drink on something like this so we invite four young winemakers and a guy was making very interesting Salcice sausages. It thinks like that which I really like to do so we're gonna see in fact what's gonna be the most effective because for me it's quite difficult now as so we are contacted enormously by schools But of course, I don't want to be then the one who travels by schools and doing then just always talks like the granddad knows it all and talks to the kids. No, this is not really my future, but we're gonna see where we're gonna end. Well, I think it's really interesting that in the 80s, this was like this incubation period for you because you only had your first runway show in 1991, right? 1991.

42:19and obviously since then, you staged. If I have my numbers correct, I think 129 fashion shows. Total numbers are correct. So from a time perspective, there's something about fashion being so fast, the runway show, in some sense, being so femoral, but the experience of those 15 minutes being so memorable and lasting, you really created these immersive worlds, I would say, when your reputation was for the close yes, but also the feeling people got when they went to these shows. It was really about being in a room together. Could you talk about the sort of hospitality that you were creating there? Do you hope for that spirit to come alive here? I mean, it sort of sounds like you do. The idea of course for me receiving people is something important.

43:13I think when you invite people, you have to give them an experience. Much more than just look, that's the clothes which I made the last six months and that's it. For me, making a collection was always with the goal of how are we going to present it. What is the story? It's more like a theater play. The only big difference with a theater play in a fashion show is that there are no rehearsals, which makes it really kind of even more kind of...

43:40the tension is very, very high. And people feel that also, people feel that if something goes wrong now, the magic is broken. And that creates even more that kind of like, I'm witnessing here now something which is just an element of things which come together. It's a huge group of people who work on a fashion show, yeah, because often there are more people nearly backstage or people who are involved with by putting the show together, then people were watching the 10 minutes, but of course, luckily enough, with two images and videos and things like that, that continues. It's a magical thing, and it was really addicted to that, to create together with it yend those kind of the catwalks, to choose the spaces, think about an expensive and small things to set the mood kind of. We did one the fashion show with 300,000 Christmas lights.

44:36120 turning discobbles, which at the end are all quite inexpensive things, but by multiplying them the quantity, we arrived to something which people were like, okay, I still remember the show, the room was covered in brown velvet, and then people said like, oh, this time it's a sober show. But then for the finale, then the curtains opened, then it was all turning discobble, and everybody really started to cry. It's like, oh, what is this?

45:04also already like sometimes the choice of music can be so if you do it right and you do the right mixture kind of and I'm very grateful that we could work together with all those incredible people. Yeah, after you had musicians playing live, right? Playing live and also we were kind of one of the views we had kind of access to.

45:25to the all the tapes from David Bowie to make like a new version of Golden Years and heroes, which is not easy to get. So you had kind of a quite good reputation by doing kind of our soundtrack. Yeah, going your own way. And obviously for the probably most famously your 50th show, you through this infamous 300 person dinner party, 500 people, 500 person dinner party.

45:50So that was for a lot of people quite funny, because of course that image is in a lot of fashion lovers on their kind of brain. When we came here to the design in Verretta and we have that main room again with those incredible chandeliers. So more than one person saw the connection. There's so many connections though, if you really take a closer look at your shows, I'm thinking of...

46:16Azuma Makoto, for example, the great Japanese floral artists who you had these installations in the middle of the runway by or South American textile artists, the carpets that look sort of like a mossy garden. Which we're going to use quite soon. I'm very, very happy because we still have them. Oh wow. And okay, it's baby, okay, it's like a little secret, which I tell you, but we're going to do a music festival end of October.

46:43Maybe you're going to roll them out in the Saloni upstairs. Oh wow. So you're going to have the chandeliers to look at and you can lay on your back, listening to music on the carpets. There were two places I wanted to bring up when I was looking at your fashion years and just thinking about how important, especially India was to you, but I also wanted to talk about Japan because you had this very formative trip to Japan early on with the Antwerp 6 and You attended a come to Garcenshow there. I believe you visited Ray Caracubo's studio. You saw the work of you say Miyaki, Matsuhiro Matsuda and Yoji Yamamoto. So could you just talk about the importance of that trip and Japan for you from a craft perspective? It was important trips for us in two ways. We did two trips in fact to Japan in our, I think, 81 and 83 or something like, or 82 and 84.

47:41And it was for us, it was such kind of a new world which opened. So it was not only the incredible fashion they were doing, but it was really kind of the consistence of the whole message what they did, kind of the whole story what they told. It was not only those beautiful collections, but it was also the stores, the way that the shop staff was behaving, the music, everything was really done in a very consistent way.

48:10And that was unique because you had Italian fashion, you had all the different types of fashion, but very often, when you came to the stores, the stores were crystal, quite, not neutral, but just designed, but not really telling the same story as a vision of the brand. And that was fantastic to see the catalogs, the photography, everything that was. That's holistic. Everything mattered. It's not like whatever, no, it was really one big vision.

48:40And this was something which we learned. It's also not that everything had to be done very, very luxurious because some source were just made in concrete. Okay, the more beautiful concrete that I'm doing things like that. But it was just concrete. It was not always automatically all made in marble and stainless steel and things like that.

49:01And you said that India made this huge impression on you. You said the vibrancy of the color, the joy and the sadness, the ugliness and the beauty. Tell me about working with the artisans there, these relationships that you built over the years and what you learned about craftsmanship through your time in India. India of course opened my eyes. I visited first a few times early 80s with a friend.

49:28And then very quickly I thought it was very interesting and challenging to see if we could use also their craftsmanship. On one hand you saw that they were losing also a lot of their knowledge, because that was really the whole shift in the 80s that all the material with the beautiful materials for what they were used to was changed in polyester.

49:54the gold became all trash, everything had to become fluid and things like that. So the biggest market they were working for were the Russian wedding dresses. So you can imagine, so it was not always like in the 80s. So it was not always like the best taste. Starting to work with those at least was really trying to explain them that they started to appreciate again the beauty of their their past and their knowledge. And that it was more interesting that the gold had kind of a patina and to see that you can do bullion and all those things and not everything just like the fastest and the cheapest possible. I mean, I know you built quite a large outfit out there in India during your time, correct?

50:38Yeah, so we didn't build it so we worked together with quite some people there and I'm very happy that there was also manufacturers who had kind of clearly the vision to say because already in that time we worked always with people in that time it was called Calcutta and now it's called Kata.

50:57And they saw already that it was important to keep really to keep the tradition alive, because most embroideries are made by men. So that really, that the knowledge was still passed on from father to son. And also that people could continue to live in the villages, that not everybody had to move to Calcutta, living in the factories. That was really the possibility that they could stay there. So they developed a system that prototypes were made in the factory but then after production pieces were really brought into the villages that people could live to continue to live in the countryside. And it was a very good system but on the other hand also for us as a brand it was important that we every season again we sold so many thousand pieces of embroidery that we could keep those people working because it has no sense to say as a designer oh this year you know something

51:50I gonna do a lot of embroidery and a season afterwards. I did so many embroidery last season, let's do something all plain or printed. Now every season again, we managed that we had kind of so many thousand pieces of embroidery that those people could start to work. Often they were white on white, when I didn't feel so much like visible embroidery, sometimes they were all gold.

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52:52What you're saying and I think is so important to acknowledge about your work then and I think even to a certain extent now is it's really rooted in this sense of responsibility and respect for the maker. The clothes you worked on from India to Leone to Lake Como, you worked with all these different factories and makers and fabricators. Do you see this foundation and some level connecting to that level of at least respect for the maker? Is it almost an homage?

53:22I think it's homage and I think also that's one of the reason why there is so much fashion here in this first exhibition. Of course because I know also when I would have to start as a young designer not having access to those incredible mills and unfortunately there are already a lot of them closed. And so when I think about all the small mills in England which are worked with who have kind of the archives from at least a hundred years on where you could go through all the fabric books to those incredible ways of making wool suit material. Going to Lyon, I remember that in Lyon there was one factory who you had to go to. And there was a guy, I think at that time, who was already 75 years old. And I was saying, yes, I'm looking for a booklet, gold, something like this. And then he looked at you and said, like,

54:111958 and then he went down to the archive and it took like kind of a book is something like this what you say I said no it's too much relief and then maybe something like this Chanel 63 and then he hand down again to take another book and say like that's quite close to what I want and now we're going to see if we still can make it and things like that so those people unfortunately don't exist but on the other hand there are still kind of Mills, luckily enough now, very often bought by Chanel or by Hermès, who really do an incredible effort to keep craftsmanship in fashion alive. And there are still mills, who work kind of things on small width, kind of on wooden looms from the 1920s. So I think it's important that we try to continue to like that, because I think it would be such a pity that we would lose all those. And that's also a little bit what we're working on now.

55:08I feel like we have to talk about gardening at least. Oh, sorry. At least once during this conversation, because it is a podcast about time. You've spent a lot of time in the garden. For those who don't know, you have this incredible, I think it's 55 acre garden surrounding your house in Belgium. Can you speak to just your gardening time a little bit? What have you learned in the garden? What has it taught you about life, about craft, about beauty?

55:36As a child, my father forced me to work in a garden, together with my brother, and I absolutely hated it. I absolutely thought. Yeah, it was early 70s. It was David Bowie on television. Sorry, but for me it was much more exciting to look to something like this than pulling weeds out of a bed of, I don't know what flowers. So for me, no, I hated it.

56:02The moment I could, I moved immediately back to the city. So when I was 18, when I started from fashion school. And I was, I think, 32. I was already for a few years together with Patrick. We started to travel sometimes to England, to look to archives of factories, but also visiting some of the big country houses and the gardens around it. We fell in love with gardening. We brought on every trip, we bought some plants back to Belgium.

56:29And the certain moment the balcony of our house was nearly collapsing under the weight of pot. Is it like, okay, I think we have to find a bigger garden. And again by coincidence, we found that incredible house with that beautiful left over of a garden, because the garden was neglected for 50 years. But I saw possibilities there, so we jumped.

56:55You see, this Palazzo is not the first time that we jumped to something which was quite scary and quite big. And we started to work. In that time, I have to say, we bought the garden in three times. So it was the first time it was six hectares, then after we bought the second piece and then after then. And so in that we were able to restore the full size of the original park.

57:17is a slow evolution. It was a slow evolution luckily because otherwise I think if we would have bought a whole thing and in one time we would never would have dared to do it. But in that time we really felt to have, I shall say, a healthy life in fashion, we needed something like a garden which puts you really with your two feet on the ground, with your hands in the soil, dictates also sometimes certain things sometimes we had to leave the office because we had a whole week of rain and the grass was too long we had to mo with and okay the first day of sun you say like I'm really sorry meetings and omitings have to go home because the grass has to be the garden doesn't wait not the garden doesn't wait and also sometimes okay it can grow or can't grow and you can do whatever you want and you in fashion you say

58:06there I want red and there I want blue and then the red flowers don't flower or the flower you do a whole composition of colors and then one season they flower exactly the way that you were hoping for and the season after everything flowers at the same time. So it's good to stay sometimes humble and to be put really with your two feet on the ground.

58:28I love what Hania Yanigahara wrote about your gardens. These gardens feel both familiar and startling. Familiar because in them one finds the colors, the unexpected juxtapositions that one recognizes in his designs, startling because it is rare to see in such an intimate way the origins of a creative mind's inspirations. Of course, gardening, of course.

58:53being creative doesn't stop when you come home and so I think poor guests they had to go through a lot of experience in the kitchen and also in the garden also so of course you do things like when I planted the rose garden which is now 12 years old I think, 12, 13 years ago, years go fast okay, that's out rules of how you have to put a rose garden and what's best for the plants but I said I don't have time I just want if I plant a garden, I want to see next year and two years, I want to see already what I have in my mind and not wait five years. So I plant it far too much, far too much under planting with a lot of peonies and things like that. And some kind of gardeners come to my garden as it's impossible. But the effect is really, it feels like...

59:46pounce tumbling over one each other and things like that. Very difficult to keep it tidy, very difficult to keep it in a good shape, but the effect is glorious. Do you view this foundation as a garden? A garden can be symbolic of a life, so yes. To finish, as I was researching, I came across this newspaper clipping from 1987.

1:00:15in which you said, so yeah, I guess, wow, almost a while ago. Yeah, a while ago. You said to design clothing forever would not be interesting. I want to do more, maybe fabrics and furnishings. So I wanted to ask, could you ever have imagined this foundation back then? Did you ever think that something like this would be possible, this large Palazzo in Venice?

1:00:40Now I think for us it was really okay, we were drinking big but stayed always with us two feet on the ground. I think that's also kind of a Belgian attitude. Of course, even three years ago, I couldn't have imagined it a while ago. We were sitting here with a few friends at Porte d'Aqua in front of the Palazzo with a good glass of wine, seeing the gondolas passing by.

1:01:07I reset like, could you even imagine like kind of two years ago that we would sit here looking at this no incredible? We're really lucky guys and we have to appreciate it every day but we can do with it really exceptional. Elsewhere in my research there was this quote where you said, at any particular moment I can see that I am a child of the time I am living in and I loved this because I love this idea of looking at the world with at least a childlike curiosity, just being totally in awe or the wonderment of what is and Venice is certainly a place that it's hard not to go on. Oh, yes, but also realizing in fact that the world is not such nice place, hence the title, and maybe now the full circle. Well, Dries, thank you for having this conversation and inviting us in. Thank you. Thank you. Nice to talk to you. Thanks.

1:02:05Extra thanks to our season 13 presenting partner, Lakul School of Jewelry Arts, which is supported by the Mason Van Cleef and Arpelles. A unique place for learning, online, and offline. Lakul welcomes the general public to the world of jewelry through courses, talks, exhibitions, videos, books, and its voice of jewels podcast. You can find out more about Lakul at LakulVan CleefArpelles.com. That's Ellie.

1:02:31C-O-L-E-V-A-N-C-L-E-E-E-F-A-R-P-E-L-S.com. And thank you for listening. You can find more episodes of Time Sensitive on our website, TimeSensitive.fm, or wherever you listen to podcasts. To keep up with our latest Time Sensitive episodes and get behind the scenes updates, sign up for our newsletter at slowdown.media-newsletter. That's slowdown.media-newsletter.

1:03:00You can follow us on Instagram at slowdown.media. Our theme music was composed by Billy Martin. This episode was produced by Ramon Brosa, Olivia Almer, Mimi Handman, Colin Lee, and Johnny Seng.