Belgian fashion designer Dries Van Noten wants to "make a girl feel cool, sexy and right for the day," writes DEIRDRE MCQUILLAN

THE OLD PORT OF Antwerp, now a fashionable marina dominated by a striking new quayside museum, is a 15-minute walk from the bustling city centre. It is here, in a converted five-storey warehouse, that Belgium's most celebrated designer, Dries Van Noten has based his extensive headquarters and showroom, the commercial and creative hub of his international business which has 500 points of sale worldwide.

In his fifth-floor office, which has mesmerising views of the harbour and the city, he explains that the building was commandeered by the Germans and then the British during the second World War. On every floor there's evidence of the designer's antique finds - pieces of interesting furniture, tables, chairs, paintings. He is an avid collector with a practised eye. One room houses floor-to-ceiling shelves stacked with fabrics, testimony to an inherited love of textiles. In another, a girl at a table is patiently hand sewing flower appliqués to a shirt. While we talk, his dog, Henry, a two-year-old Airedale, sits patiently at his feet.

Van Noten, a slim man who turned 52 in May, is casually dressed in a light cardigan, trousers and a silk polka-dot scarf. He has an understated, low-key manner in keeping with his reputation. He is one of the Antwerp Six, the designers who made the Belgian city - more commonly associated with diamonds - synonymous with fashion, and he has become known for a non-conformist approach both to his collections and in his attitude to the industry.

"I'm a little bit of a contrarian and I like doing things in a different way to the others," he says with a smile. His creative team members are chosen for their ability to surprise him. "I need people who are doing things with a different approach - that feeds me and that is what I need." They are an international mix from Japan, France and elsewhere and "are like a family. I always need the whole team around me," he says. His head of communications Patrick Scallon and press attaché James Deeny are both Irish.

Van Noten produces four collections a year, resisting pressure to do pre-collections as other luxury houses do. He favours the catwalk as his principal form of communication rather than lavish media advertising, doesn't hobnob or place free clothes with celebrities, is a passionate gardener rather than a partygoer, and has remained defiantly independent. He lives with his partner in a 19th-century estate outside the city, off limits to press, but whose magical gardens recently featured in US Vogue.

He is modest in his response to the attention he received in the US media for the beautiful handpainted skirt and embellished jacket from his current collection which was worn by Michele Obama in India.

"It is nice, but it is also nice to see a girl you don't know wear the clothes," he shrugs. Van Noten is known for the originality of his prints, subtle colour combinations, and for his ability to draw from ethnic influences in a modern way. His catwalk shows in Paris have become legendary events - his 50th collection was staged in an old factory where the catwalk was a lengthy dinner table that stretched under a line of 150 chandeliers. More recently, the spectacular setting for his winter 2010 show was the grandeur of the Hôtel de Ville in Paris.

Fashion was always in his blood. His grandfather started a successful menswear business in Antwerp, as did his father in turn, so the young Van Noten was used to going on buying trips with his parents to Paris, Milan and Düsseldorf. It was inevitable that he would study fashion design. "As a child I was always organising fashion shows for my father's business," he recalls.

I ask him what it means to be a Belgian designer. "We have a rather no-nonsense approach (to fashion), a hands-on attitude and we don't have the parties like in Paris. We have a quiet life which gives us a starting point for the collection. The goal though, is to keep a distance. But one of the disadvantages is that you can feel trapped because it's a small city. But then if you take the train you are in Paris in two hours. You can move around very easily."

Van Noten insists that his design approach is more about attention to individual pieces which can then be combined in different ways rather than an overall look. "They are unique pieces," says Karen Higgins of Brown Thomas, who introduced his clothes to Ireland eight years ago. "They are collector's pieces and not just fashion pieces."

"He has his own following in Ireland, clients who are into art and interiors," according to buyer Colette O'Leary.

As to fashion's current preoccupation with the past, he has this to say: "I'm not nostalgic. I like to look to the past. I respect the past, the skills, the tradition, the know-how, but you can take a 1950s jackets and mix it in a different way. Everything is about perception. For my winter collection I wanted to do something in a punkish way. For me fashion became very serious. I was thinking about the post-punk period when we had so much fun with fashion as students - we cut up clothes, we played with them to create a look. So in this collection we took a utility jacket, pintucked it to give it a more beautiful shape, removed the sleeves and then I put extra volume in the skirt. For the fabric, we took a paintbrush on a long table and painted on to the printed fabric," he says, spreading his arms to describe the process of making the dress, explaining that the atelier in Como in Italy where the fabric is produced is one of the few where such handpainting is possible.

"It is always difficult to find the balance, to know how far to push," he adds, warming to the subject. "The scariest moment was the show itself, the music by Malcolm McLaren was very bombastic, so I reduced the make-up and the hair - it needed to look as if there was no hairdresser backstage."

Given the energy and passion that goes into every aspect of the show - models are chosen for the way they move in the clothes - he says he feels like a zombie afterwards. "There is such a build-up of emotion and pressure; it's like post-natal depression. I don't want to see the DVD."

Van Noten's style is very much his own and his painterly approach to fabric and love of ethnic dress remains consistent. "One side is the craftsmanship, but I also like to support the industries. In 1988 I was one of the first designers to work in India and at that time they were making polyester wedding dresses for the Russian market. They educated me as much as I educated them. We have more than 3,000 people embroidering for us and that is a commitment and a responsibility. So every season we have to make things in a different way, so they look completely different."

Most of the time and effort go into producing original fabrics. "We put all our energy into that, working with museums all over the world, from ikats fabrics in Uzbekistan, Shibori in Japan [ both are methods of dyeing fabric] and with inkjet printing in Italy." His aesthetic and cultural references are wide and varied - the colours in one collection were inspired by a Francis Bacon exhibition - as his interest in music. "Except free jazz - I can't take it because it makes me nervous, it's too complicated," he says.

Such drive and dedication are tempered by a certain waywardness. He says he's wary of consensus and makes the comparison with how he gardens. "I like to take things that are considered bad taste, such as the gladioli, and see it in another context. Everybody says it is an ugly flower, but I like to use it in an intriguing and interesting way." His sense of style and sensibility is reflected in his shops, particular in the new menswear shop in Paris with its specially selected colours, decorative features and objects d'art.

His collection for spring featuring oversize boyfriend jackets and dip-dyed denims was a play on light and shade incorporating elements of male and female dress. "I like to bring menswear into womenswear," he says. "Modernity today is what is right for the time. Things are different in fashion now and the rules are changing. It used to be what colour, what season, what length. People just want to wear things that they like. It's different now. I want to make a girl feel cool, sexy and right for the day."