Patrick Vangheluwe

Patrick Vangheluwe is a long-standing business and cultural partner of Dries Van Noten. The house’s official chronology records that he joined the company in 1987, during the period in which the new label was converting its London breakthrough into a permanent Antwerp organisation and preparing to open Het Modepaleis.

His contribution has been associated with the house’s visual continuity, retail environments and the private working partnership around the collections rather than a separately publicised executive title. Together with Van Noten, he helped shape stores that use historic architecture, art and collected objects instead of a standardised global interior system.

After Van Noten stepped away from seasonal creative direction, the two co-founded the independent Fondazione Dries Van Noten in Venice. The foundation opened in 2026 as a platform for art, fashion and craftsmanship, extending their shared interest in material culture and exhibition-making beyond the fashion company.

Vangheluwe’s public work is most visible through space and curation. The retail projects associated with him and Van Noten retain the character of existing buildings and place furniture, art and decorative objects in deliberate tension, allowing each store to develop as a specific environment rather than a repeated corporate template.

The Fondazione continues that approach within a historic Venetian palazzo. Contemporary fashion, art and craft are placed against an architecture that remains active in the presentation, producing a layered institutional setting instead of a neutral gallery. His contribution is therefore less a separate garment language than a sustained method of framing objects, rooms and cultural relationships.