Julian Klausner’s Dries Van Noten – When Dawn Breaks, He Dresses Himself
“In this second mens collection, I wanted to explore the idea of coming of age…not in a dramatic or romantic way, but praising the joy of new beginnings.” Julian Klausner
The show felt like that fragile hour when a night train exhales its last sigh and the platform fills with young men who have packed their entire past into one overstuffed bag. They walked as if just arrived in a new city, sleeves slightly too long, hems a touch too short, learning their own silhouettes in real time.
Coats – long pencil lines, parkas, capes and capelets – moved like travelling companions rather than statements, the sort of outerwear you remember years later because it witnessed you becoming yourself. There was a tenderness to the way they sat on the body, strict in cut yet smudged by sentiment, as if they once belonged to a father, an uncle, a beloved teacher, now repurposed for another chapter.
Julien’s men seemed to dress out of a shared family wardrobe: fathers’ coats, mothers’ florals, siblings’ scarves, a school jacket outgrown but refused. The styling leaned into this patchwork of inheritance, layering souvenirs and comforters until each look read like a diary entry rather than an outfit.
The skirts and kilts were not provocation, but continuity – another garment pulled from the rail without anxiety, worn with the same ease as a beloved jumper. On these tall, elastic silhouettes – too tight, too big, too long, a bit short – the skirts felt like punctuation marks, moments of softness cutting through the tailored strictness of reimagined school uniforms.
Knitwear was the collection’s emotional ground note, the familiar embrace that keeps a throat from tightening when the train finally pulls away. Fair Isle, argyle, stripes, cables, embroidery: the language of winter weekends and after-school evenings, translated into something sharper yet still defiantly human.
Often the knits appeared where least expected – as inserts, textures, impasto gestures across coats and jackets – like memories seeping through formal surfaces. Patchwork knit hats, soft bags, tightened scarves and untightened ties turned each boy into his own stylist, fiddling with proportions and textures in that instinctive, experimental way of early adulthood.
The colour story stayed close to a muted reel: blues, greys, neutrals, lit by sudden Fruitella pastels that flashed like city lights caught on wet pavement. Blurred florals, printed out of polaroids, looked as if someone had pressed old photographs directly onto the clothes, images half-remembered yet stubbornly present.
Feet remained close to the ground – sneakers, hi-top boxing shoes, whole-cut Oxfords with brogue detailing – because these characters are still running for trains, still late for their own futures. Big gym bags, laundry bags, satchels and school bags swung at their sides, not as props but as narrative devices, carrying the invisible weight of everything they couldn’t leave behind.
To Maki Asakawa’s “Yo Ga Aketara (When Dawn Breaks),” the collection unfolded like a quiet coming-of-age film: no melodrama, just the small, decisive gestures that change a life. A knot tightened, a tie loosened, a coat shrugged off one shoulder – each movement suggested a boy rehearsing the man he might become.
In refusing spectacle and instead trusting in the poetry of archetypal shapes, Julien achieved something rare: menswear that feels both utterly contemporary and deeply, privately felt. The beauty of the show lay not in any single look, but in the collective sensation that these young men were stepping into the city – in skirts, in coats, in knits – exactly as they are, and that this, finally, was enough.
Song: “Yo Ga Aketara (When Dawn Breaks)” /“夜が明けたら”
by Artist: Maki Asakawa / 浅川マキ, released in 1969
Later,
Diane
