Dries van noten's venice debut submerges in opulence

Dries Van Noten's Fondazione debut presentation in Venice this April promises an immersive experience of overwhelming beauty, warning those who might faint at such splendor. Within the lavish confines of Palazzo Pisani Moretta, a 18th-century jewel of decorative excess, Fashion, art, and craft converge in a kaleidoscopic Wunderkammer.

The only true protest is beauty

Van Noten's curatorial genius shapes the presentation, anchored by large-scale photographs by Canadian artist Steven Shearer. The atmosphere is simultaneously atmospheric, opulent, and calm, punctuated by deliberate dissonance that heightens the arcane harmony.

Juxtapositions abound, such as a sculptural Comme des Garçons look from 2024, topped with a headpiece by Julien d'Ys, standing alongside an anonymous 18th-century portrait of Giustiniano Bullo as a child. Nearby, Pierrot Fleuri (2025) by Kaori Kurihara, a gilded, glazed, unsettling multilobate botanical creature, finds a jewel-box room wrapped in sumptuous lampas by Tessitura Bevilacqua.

Elsewhere, crystalline works by Alexander Kirkeby shimmer alongside the Pisani Moretta family's 18th-century crested glassware, collapsing centuries into a glittering continuum. And then, resplendent like the ceremonial gown of a dogaressa, the last robe de mariée made by Christian Lacroix radiates within the gilded intimacy of the Camerino d'Oro, with its lavishly dilapidated feast of antique Chinoiseries.

As the presentation's title suggests,