The year 2025 was an inflection point in contemporary fashion. More than 20 leading labels, including Chanel, Bottega Veneta, and Valentino, welcomed new creative leads. It was an industry-wide reaction to a slowdown in luxury spending and the welcoming of an, in some cases overdue, season of change.
Some of those designers were familiar names, like Jonathan Anderson, who went to Dior from Loewe, or Demna, who left Balenciaga for Gucci (a phenomenon sardonically referred to in the industry as “musical chairs”).
Then there was Julian Klausner, who was promoted to creative director at Dries Van Noten in December of 2024. Klausner, 34, who had spent close to six years as the brand’s head of womenswear, was virtually unknown.
His appointment came at a delicate time for the cult label that Van Noten, a venerated Belgian designer famously known for being part of the much mythologized “Antwerp Six,” founded in 1986. The designer announced his retirement at 65 in March of 2024, sending an industry-wide shockwave. A glorious career was ending, as was an era in fashion, and the future of his widely beloved label was suddenly a question mark.
In many ways, Klausner had the hardest job of them all. He was not only an untested designer whose name was not synonymous with an aesthetic, like, say, Alessandro Michele, who left Gucci and arrived at Valentino. But his role was not to fix a flailing business, but, rather, to keep a roaring flame alive. He was an anomaly in this season of change in part because he had been handpicked by his predecessor, and he would also be tasked with taking on the mantle for a founder-led brand rather than within a conglomerate.
“I did not feel like I was part of the musical chairs, I was here, and I stayed here,” he tells me from his office in Antwerp, “I didn’t feel like part of this big shift.”
Klausner’s fifth show at Dries Van Noten, held Wednesday during Paris Fashion Week, will mark a year of collections under his belt, which have catapulted him from a behind-the-scenes man to one of the industry’s undeniable rising stars. He recalls meeting a critic ahead of his first show: “She said, ‘you have a really tricky position, because I’m here as a reviewer, but I’m also here as a customer,” Klausner recalls. “I was like, ‘okay, no pressure.’”
