Reiner Holzemer's documentary "Dries", a film that looks at the life and career of Belgian designer, Dries Van Noten opens with footage from the S/S 15 collection: a model walks on a runway that looks as if it were covered with moss (a carpet by Argentinean artist Alexandra Kehayoglou), birds chirp in the background, while an eerily haunting voice sings.
The camera then frames Dries Van Noten himself who is rewatching the show and silently pondering about the collection inspired by John Everett Millais' "Ophelia".
The quiet and soothing mood that characterises the opening of the documentary continues throughout the film that will be on tonight (and on Saturday 4th November) at the Cinépolis Chelsea (260 West 23rd Street, NYC), as part of the ninth edition of the Architecture & Design Film Festival (ADFF), curated by Kyle Bergman.
Architecture purists shouldn't be repelled at all by this documentary since it features quite a few buildings to get inspired by. In a way this is indeed an architectural film: German filmmaker Reiner Holzemer followed across the course of four men and women's wear collections (around a year) Dries Van Noten, a designer who chose to remain independent in an industry mainly ruled by large and powerful groups and conglomerates.
The director films Van Noten as he prepares the models in the backstage of his runways; while he works in his Antwerp studio, a former wine and spirits warehouse on the waterfront, or picks a venue for the next show.
The director is also shown in a more private realm, at Ringenhof, the Neoclassical 1800s mansion in the Medieval town of Lier, in Antwerp, with his partner of almost 30 years, Patrick Vangheluwe.
The bright colours of the flowers in the envy-inducing luscious 55-acre park and gardens surrounding the building (designed by landscape architect Erik Dhond) are a clear inspiration for the designer.
Different locations become therefore the co-protagonists of the film, but Van Noten doesn't change throughout the documentary – he is professional, calm, consistent, level-headed and well, exhausted, as he admits at the very end of the movie, adding that, yes, skipping one season would be fantastic, but he simply can't do it.
Holzemer also includes footage of a young Van Noten at Antwerp's Royal Academy of Fine Art, as a member of the Antwerp Six and at the beginning of his career. But the best thing about the documentary remains the focus on traditions and on the designer's artisanal approach and on his passion for textiles and fabrics.
Born into a tailoring family, Van Noten claims he is the most spoilt designer in the world because he can create all the textiles he wants and needs thanks to his collaborations with producers and artisans, while most fashion designers do not have this possibility. The director gives us a glimpse of such collaborations showing artisans working on Van Noten's prints and embroideries in workshops in Kolkata, India, and in a factory in Como, Italy.
In Antwerp Van Noten is shown instead as he surveys numerous samples of fabrics arranged neatly on the floor of his studio, as he talks about his eclectic craziness à la Anna Piaggi combined with a classical education and with a fascination with couture and couture shapes, or as he experiments with checks and leopard prints for a men's collection, reminding his audience that the best combinations happen by coincidence and by looking at fabrics with a very careful eye.
Yet clashing prints and colours are not the only things Van Noten combines together with maximum results: known for his love of art references, the designer likes to collage together different eras and inspirations - from the Baroque to Pop Art, from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance and Surrealism.
Not everything is perfect, though: as the designer re-watches some of his past runways, he revisits some of his best ideas, such as the S/S 94 collection with silk garments that he threw in the washing machine to make the chic designs look ideal for everyday-wear, or his A/W 96 Bollywood-inspired collection that amazed people for its bright colours that broke into the era's prevailing black.
At the same time Van Noten admits his mistakes, recalls the time when fashion critic Suzy Menkes killed a shade in his collection by labelling it "rotten shrimp", and confesses he had rather bad times as well. While other designers just interested in living the more glitz and glamorous aspects of fashion may restrain from criticising the industry, Van Noten isn't shy, he states indeed he doesn't even like the word, "because 'fashion' means something that is over after six months", while he is more interested in timelessness.
The film culminates with Van Noten presenting his A/W16 menswear collection at the Opera Garnier in Paris, yet remaining detached from the fashion circus. There are indeed no glamorous parties, no kisses to powerful editors or pictures with celebrities and high profile bloggers in this documentary. "To me he is a treasure and he has to be treated as such. The fashion industry has really dug its own grave and people like Dries keep the flame alive, they keep it going," icon of style and interior designer Iris Apfel states towards the end of the documentary. Who are we to disagree with her?
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