Dries Van Noten

For Dries Van Noten, beauty has never meant something easy. It has always been layered, emotional, crafted, contradictory, and deeply human — a print against a texture, a colour against another colour, a garment carrying memory without having to explain itself.

Now, that vision moves into book form. Fondazione Dries Van Noten has released its first publication, The Only True Protest Is Beauty, extending the foundation’s inaugural presentation in Venice into a printed object that thinks beyond the usual borders of fashion, art, design, and craft. The title, borrowed from activist and folk singer Phil Ochs, frames beauty not as decoration, but as a form of intensity, provocation, and transformation.

The book grows out of the foundation’s first major presentation, on view at Palazzo Pisani Moretta in Venice from April 25 to October 4, 2026. Curated by Dries Van Noten with Geert Bruloot, the project brings together more than 200 objects across fashion, jewellery, design, art, photography, glass, ceramics, and material experimentation, placing them inside a historic palazzo overlooking the Grand Canal.

What makes the project compelling is its refusal to separate disciplines into clean rooms. A garment can speak to a sculpture. A jewel can answer a photograph. Glass, clay, fabric, metal, and image can all become part of the same conversation about making. In Van Noten’s hands, craft becomes less a category than a language: one that moves through the hand, the eye, the body, and the emotional intelligence of materials.

That approach makes sense for a designer whose own work has always lived between worlds. Van Noten, part of the Antwerp Six, built one of fashion’s most singular houses through colour, print, embroidery, cultural layering, and an instinct for atmosphere. After stepping away from his label’s creative direction in 2024, he has turned the foundation into a new kind of stage — not for self-celebration, but for the artists and makers who continue to expand his idea of beauty.

The foundation itself sharpens that vision. Founded by Dries Van Noten and Patrick Vangheluwe, and housed in the historic Palazzo Pisani Moretta, it is dedicated to craftsmanship as a vital language of cultural identity, connecting established voices and emerging creators across art, design, fashion, architecture, food, and beyond.

In book form, that mission becomes more intimate. An exhibition asks the viewer to move through space; a book asks for a different kind of attention. It can be held, returned to, marked, lived with. It transforms the presentation into something slower, allowing the reader to follow the resonances between objects without the urgency of walking through rooms.