Dries Van Noten – Het Modepaleis

Antwerp-born clothes designer Dries Van Noten is perhaps the best known of the so-called Antwerp Six – a set of six then-young designers who came into their own in the 1980s – and this elegant flagship store, opened in 1989, stands ever so prominently on a rounded corner in the thick of designery Antwerp, just a few doors down from fashion museum MoMu [see entry]. Van Noten was born in 1958, preceded by two family generations of tailors. He opened a bite-sized boutique in 1986 and three years later shifted to this store in a now-listed Antwerp building, with women's wear on the ground floor and men upstairs. In short, clothing shop as tourist hot spot, and for very good reason.