Dries Van Noten’s Surf and Sequins
Anders Christian Madsen reviews the Dries Van Noten Spring/Summer 2026 collection by Julian Klausner.
The best Dries Van Noten shows always had you shopping the runway while you were watching them unfold. Often, the founder would build up the pieces, sending out—say—jacket after jacket, slowly adding more intrigue via the same idea. When it hit the high note, you knew you had to have it. At his second women’s show since he was appointed as the first creative director to take over after Van Noten, Julian Klausner conjured some of that feeling. Intriguing yet wearable jackets—something the brand always mastered—came with trippy floral prints, ornate embroideries and sequins, and historical memories of the courtly and military wardrobes. You wanted to own them.
Klausner’s collection was informed by beach life and surfing. “I was struck by how elegant the silhouette of a wetsuit is,” he said. He conveyed it in long swim shorts worn under some of those nice jackets and coats, and in the many floaty dresses that closed the show, held in a naked space within the Palais de Tokyo. “We experimented with scale, color, and shapes, balancing hard and soft, stiff and fluid, casual and refined, simple and complex; bringing things together into a joyful mix with unfiltered intuitiveness,” he explained. It made for a patchwork of references and energies, which didn’t always have the instant covetability of his jackets, but certainly got your attention. Said floaty dresses were emblazoned with loud, colorful Op Art patterns that overwhelmed the senses.
DRIES VAN NOTEN
The Dries Van Noten aesthetic is made up of highly graphic and decorative elements, which always worked best in a coherent balance. Turning the volume up and down on these factors and finding the right level always made for the best collections. More so than the floaty modernist print dresses, Klausner hit this balance in the meeting between workwear and historical opulence that embodied his jackets. As he continues to settle in at the helm of the brand—where he worked under Van Noten for years—those of us who often made a trip to the boutiques on Quai Malaquais after a show will surely be making a return.
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