“I don’t want to be a big player,” Dries Van Noten insisted in 2006. Yet he had, in fact, already become one. Rising to prominence in the 1980s, he all but created the mold for the commercially successful independent designer.

Van Noten was one of the Antwerp Six who traveled to London and made a splash in the mid-1980s. In 1986 he established his own label and opened his first boutique in the Belgian fashion capital, and in 1993 brought his women’s collection to the Paris runways. “I was doing something different than other designers,” he explained in 2000. “I showed delicate, fine dresses with rose prints and a rather Indian influence.”

Fabric is usually Van Noten’s starting point, along with a certain trademark exoticism—anything “that reroutes us from the ordinary,” to use his words. “I’m known for color and prints and embroideries,” he told Vogue in 2007. “Normally the more clashing it is, the more that I like it!”

In 2008, he received the CFDA’s prestigious International Award. Van Noten has had a strong influence on younger designers, and he’s also mentored many. Sies Marjan’s Sander Lak is the latest; his debut collection for Fall 2016 was picked up by MatchesFashion.com.

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