Dries Van Noten

Belgian fashion designer Dries Van Noten rose in the early eighties at a time when the fashion industry turned its attention to Belgium, a city that produced a collective of avant-garde designers who graduated from Antwerp Royal Academy of Fine Arts and were nicknamed the Antwerp Six (which also includes Ann Demeulemeester)­. His debut collection in 1986 garnered so much international press that Barneys New York immediately picked it up, a monumental career highlight and widely considered his "big break." By 1989 he opened his own boutique in Antwerp and two years later launched menswear with a show in Paris, where he also went on to show womenswear since 1993. The label continues to grow, touting five boutiques and 500 storefronts by 2008, and the designer won the CFDA International Award the same year. And with each collection critics' praise the designer's unique poetic and cerebral look-unassuming textures, controlled layering, and most famously art-inspired prints, all of which are developed in-house.