Dries Van Noten On Why He’s Opening A Beauty Store

A year since expanding into beauty with a gender-fluid, refillable line of 10 perfumes and 30 lipsticks, Dries Van Noten has a physical location to showcase its offering.

The has brand opened its first standalone store dedicated to fragrance, make-up and small accessories in the heart of Paris’s Rive Gauche. It marks an opportunity to broaden Dries Van Noten’s lexicon and bring consumers deeper into its namesake founder’s world — which could help to drive sales across other categories, as well as beauty.

There will be some in-store exclusives, such as pouches, travel sets and other compact items. While the overall offering — by Van Noten’s own admission — is “still quite small”, more fragrance launches and new beauty product categories are planned for 2024.

“It’s the first time that we are trying something like this. A fashion store is something else,” says Van Noten from the store ahead of the opening party this evening. The space is designed to foster interaction and discovery, he explains. “The perfumes, you have to smell; the lipsticks, you have to be able to try. But of course it has to be beautiful also.”

The label secured a 650-square-foot retail space next door to its existing men’s and women’s stores on Quai Malaquais, in a historical building first constructed in 1625. The site’s rich history appealed to Van Noten. The Prince of Transylvania was a former resident, inviting figures who would later be immortalised in French author Abbé Prévost’s novels, in turn inspiring Italian composer Giacomo Puccini’s operas. Later, the site became home to the Bréheret gallery, which exhibited early works from modernist artists including Marc Chagall and Pablo Picasso.

Each detail of the boutique was meticulously crafted by Van Noten to juxtapose historical accents with contemporary design. It includes a 17th-century Flemish tapestry depicting a baroque scene of a pergola amid a garden oasis, a nod to his passion for floriculture; a reassembled chandelier made of pieces of 1970s Venini glass; and furniture from different periods, reflecting the designer’s eclectic range of references and inspiration. There is also an all-black Cabinet de Curiosité room, which houses archive pieces, such as small leather goods, jewellery, scarves and some other fashion accessories from past collections.

While e-commerce offers consumers convenience, it struggles to replicate the intimacy and personalised offering of a physical store, Van Noten believes. “Having the experience of somebody explaining to you all the small details; the possibility of choosing the special pouch in which you want to buy your perfume; the conversation with the salesperson and being able to interact with the space… it’s the totality of it all.”

The store also encapsulates a wider movement within beauty where products are designed to be cherished and adored. Brands such as Hermès, Byredo and Isamaya Ffrench place an emphasis on creating beauty products that are not just to be used, but are like works of art to be collected or put on display. Not only does it help to elevate a brand’s positioning, it is viewed as less wasteful because they are refillable and not meant to be thrown away; aligning with growing scrutiny around sustainability in beauty.

On being part of Puig

One of the members of the renowned Antwerp Six, Belgium’s influential avant-garde fashion collective, Van Noten launched his brand in 1986. For over three decades, the designer, known for his masterful use of colours and intellectual aesthetic, was one of the industry’s rare independent operators. Then, in 2018, he sold a majority stake to Spanish group Puig. At the time, the label’s annual sales were estimated at around $100 million. (The company doesn’t share or comment on sales figures.)

The deal with Puig came as a surprise to some observers. For most of its existence, Puig had focused on fragrance; fashion is an entirely different business model. However, Van Noten is thought to be one of the few businesses that makes money from clothes as well as accessories, thanks in part to its relatively keen pricing compared with luxury rivals (a print cotton-poplin shirt costs £390, for example). The brand ranked as the ninth most-viewed show on Vogue Runway this men’s spring/summer 2024 season.

Speaking with Vogue Business in March, Puig chairman and CEO Marc Puig said the group, which had recently acquired perfume label Byredo and beauty and skincare brand Charlotte Tilbury, was focused on opportunities in skincare and niche fragrances as it aims to reach annual sales of €4.5 billion by 2025. The executive believed the group was “in an excellent position” to reach its target and was confident that some names in its portfolio — including Paco Rabanne — could become €1 billion brands. (Last week, Rabanne unveiled its expansion into beauty.)

So far, the relationship with Puig has been amicable and fruitful, thanks to the conglomerate’s experience, technical access and willingness to try new things, says Van Noten. “When I dream about something, they always say ‘OK, let’s try it’.” However, he’s not in a rush to turbo-charge growth. “I really want to take my time. I don’t want to be guided by a calendar [that dictates] we have to get more and more new products out,” he explains. “There are already so many beauty collections in the world. It’s important that the products we launch make sense.”

Pushing further into beauty has been a learning curve for Van Noten. For example, the concept of a “scent wardrobe” has been popularised in recent years, in which consumers select not only their choice of clothing, bag and shoes for the day, but a fragrance that reflects their daily mood, rather than just sticking to the one item they may have traditionally had on their cabinet for many years. “I didn’t expect it,” says Van Noten. “It’s clearly now the case where people want to have different perfumes. There is a dissonance between what they choose for winter and for summer.”

The biggest learning is how to react to beauty’s fickle consumer. In fashion, where the designer is well established and has defined his own aesthetic and house codes, buyers and customers happily buy into his signature pieces season after season. Building loyalty in beauty is more challenging, not only as a newer entrant but because of transient consumer behaviour, he says. “The surprise is that [in beauty] it’s difficult to predict what people are going to go for.”