Dries Van Noten named Julian Klausner creative director in December 2024, the first appointment to follow the house's founder after his final men's show in June 2024, per the announcement coverage. Klausner was no outsider parachuted in: he joined the house in 2018 as head of womenswear, per the Fédération de la Haute Couture et de la Mode's house directory, and his promotion followed a first men's collection shown under his direction in January 2025.
Why does succeeding a founder differ from succeeding a designer?
Because the author is the archive. Van Noten built one of the Antwerp Six careers into a house famous for print, embroidery, florals and a deliberately un-fashion relationship with trends — and he retired rather than sold his name to the highest bidder, retaining the house under independent Spanish ownership through Puig. Klausner's brief was therefore not reinvention but continuation with a pulse: keep the print-saturated, tactile identity while proving the house can breathe without its founder in the studio.
What did the women's runway actually show?
Klausner's first women's runway show as creative director was held on March 5, 2025, during Paris Fashion Week, staged in the opulent halls of the Palais Garnier, per AP News and show coverage. Per WWD, the debut delivered the brand's mix of fantasy and restraint, but with a freer hand and bodily sensuality — velvet, satin and the house's floral vocabulary cut closer to the body than the founder's looser volumes. Per Bergdorf Goodman's commentary, it read as a decadent debut bringing sensual opulence to the house's storied artistry.
The continuation thesis
One early commentary framed it precisely: the debut did not announce a new era so much as deepen the existing one — unmistakably Dries. For a founder-house, that continuity is the strategy, not the failure.
What does the appointment mean for independent houses?
Dries Van Noten is among the last major names operating without a creative-director carousel, and its choice of an internal, Belgian, womenswear-formed designer over a star name documents a different succession model from the 2025 conglomerate churn. By mid-2026, Klausner's two seasons argued the model can hold: the house's identity intact, its hand freed, its second act running on the founder's own vocabulary.
The sequencing of his mandate is the proof of intent. Klausner's first men's collection under his direction was shown in January 2025, before the women's runway — a reversal of the usual order that acknowledged the house's menswear-first founder and gave the newer director a smaller stage first. The staging at the Palais Garnier then scaled the women's debut to match the maison's ambitions, and per AP News the Paris season treated it as one of the week's principal appointments to judge.
For more context, read Haider Ackermann At Tom Ford: The First Runway, Measured.
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For more context, read Jonathan Anderson At Dior: One Designer, Every Collection.