Belgian fashion designer Dries Van Noten decided to step down from his position as creative director of the fashion house he founded. The collection he shows at Paris Men’s Fashion Week in June will be his last. The Dries Van Noten brand will continue to exist; A new creative director will be sought in the coming months.

“I have been preparing for this moment for a while, and I feel it is time to make room for a new generation of talent to share their vision with the brand,” the 65-year-old fashion designer wrote. In the current situation. “Now I want to focus on everything I didn’t have time for before. I’m sad, but I’m also happy.”

According to Spanish fashion and fragrance company Puig, which bought a majority stake in the Antwerp fashion house in 2018, Van Noten will remain involved with his label “to work on specific projects.”

Dries Van Noten is one of the most famous fashion designers that Belgium has produced. He grew up in a family of tailors and clothing sellers. In the early 1980s he graduated from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp, just like his contemporaries Anne Demeulemeester, Dirk Bikkembergs, Walter van Beirendonck, Dirk van Saen and Marina Yee. Together they are considered the Antwerp Six.

In 1986, the designer created his own fashion house. Initially focusing only on men’s fashion, it debuted at Paris Fashion Week in 1991. Two years later a women’s collection was added.

Since then, the designer has shown four collections every year to the press, the fashion-loving public and ordinary customers such as Queen Máxima And Belgian Queen Mathilde. Under the leadership of major shareholder Puig, the fragrance and makeup line was recently launched.