FactualKnown for his subtle style and his sense of color, Dries Van Noten launched into cosmetics with the support of the Catalan group Puig. Starting in May, it offers a range centered around ten fragrances in elegant bottles.
Familiars of Dries Van Noten will see it as a plant treasure hunt. A single pschitt of one of the perfumes launched at the beginning of March by the Belgian label, and the images resurface. The orange blossom drawn on the back of a very beautiful gray cape, the iris of a pale yellow silk blouse from Spring 2008, the majestic green leaves of a print from Spring 2012 and, of course, the rose, the creator’s favorite flower, reinterpreted for any occasion…
Soft scents, but always jostled by darker notes, like his spring 2014 men’s collection, where he had mixed exotic Hawaiian budding and dazzling bronze damasks with deep navy and gray, accented with dark glasses a little sleazy rocker scoundrel. “I never look for ease or, worse, to look pretty, summarizes the Flemish designer. What interests me is what destabilizes. »
Renowned for its floral prints
Her first beauty collection includes ten unisex fragrances, skincare, soaps, lipsticks. Launched in its stores these days, it will be deployed, from May, to a handful of retailers. For at least fifteen years, the possibility of a variation of its fashion in fragrances had become an antiphon of the small medium of perfumery.
How could Dries Van Noten, high-flying colorist renowned for his floral prints, with rich references (camouflage, butterflies, escapes to India, Viscontian fantasies, etc.) and passionate gardener, not make you want to encapsulate his universe in a bottle? “His work mixes explosion of tones and contrast of materials. Which can only be beneficial for working in color and texture perfumery”, looks up Quentin Bisch.
In 2013, the perfume publisher Frédéric Malle managed to convince the creator to let the “olfactory portrait”. In a designed juice “like a couture winter coat”, emphatically praised the brand when it came out, the Bruno Jovanovic nose had sketched it out with sandalwood, vanilla, saffron, jasmine and white musk. Since then, Dries Van Noten wore it, he who was, “Like many people in [sa] generation, a fan, in childhood, of Eau de Cologne 4711, of Maürer & Wirtz, then, growing up, of Aramis, of Estée Lauder, and of Yatagan, of Caron”.
A strong group
Did he know that perfume would be a path he would explore by commissioning, at the end of 2017, Elsa Berry? Fine fly of the “fusacs”, as insiders call these mergers and acquisitions which agitate the economy, and in particular the luxury sector, the banker installed in New York had the ambition, at this time, to find a financial protector with the claw of the Belgian. Independent since its launch in 1986, it struggles in a world where luxury is concentrated in the hands of a few powerful groups (before the pandemic, according to analysts, only five players – the French LVMH, Kering, Chanel and Hermès, and the Swiss Richemont — shared more than 40% of the world market).
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