If you’ve never experienced Stendhal syndrome, that curious inclination to feel faint in the face of overwhelming beauty, take this as a warning. At Dries Van Noten’s Fondazione debut presentation, opening in Venice on April 25, an onslaught of intoxicating meraviglie awaits. Within the lavish embrace of Palazzo Pisani Moretta, whose stuccoed ceilings and ornate rooms are a manifesto of 18th century decorative excess, beauty isn’t simply in residence, it proliferates. Fashion, craft, and art converse fluently, each amplifying the other in a prismatic Wunderkammer, shaped by Van Noten’s almost alchemical curatorial instinct.

Anchored by the large-scale photographs of Canadian artist Steven Shearer, the presentation unfolds as a whirlwind where ceramics, clothes, glass, and jewelry, by both emerging and established makers, respond to one another. The beat is atmospheric, opulent, and calm, occasionally pierced by a deliberate dissonance that only heightens its arcane harmony.

Among the myriads of wonderfully strident juxtapositions: A sculptural Comme des Garçons look from 2024, crowned with a headpiece by Julien d’Ys, holds its own against an anonymous 18th-century portrait of Giustiniano Bullo as a child, an unlikely but perfectly pitched duet. Nearby, Pierrot Fleuri (2025) by Kaori Kurihara, a gilded, glazed, disquieting multilobate botanical creature, gathers with its kin inside 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 irradiates within the gilded intimacy of the Camerino d’Oro, with its lavishly dilapidated feast of antique Chinoiseries.

From the outset, the presentation’s title, “The Only True Protest Is Beauty,” sounds like a rallying cry, almost a call to the barricades. But Van Noten’s approach favors subtlety and nuance. On the eve of the opening, he could be found in his palazzo, immersed in a kind of fabulous mayhem akin to that of a fashion show’s backstage, only more hushed: wooden mannequins don’t complain or gossip, and artworks keep their moods to themselves. We discussed the historic palazzo that houses the presentation, why fashion is merely a punctuation mark in this expansive show, and, naturally, the power of beauty.

Beauty feels increasingly scarce in the world right now. When conceiving the exhibition, were you responding to this specific moment, or was it a more abstract idea that happens to resonate with the times we’re living in?

DVN: We only bought the palazzo last year, but the idea of starting a foundation, and staging an exhibition, had been quietly brewing for much longer. Then, a couple of years ago, I came across a 1960s Phil Ochs’s line: “in such ugly times, the only true protest is beauty.” It stuck. I thought it might serve as a working title, surely temporary, because things would improve. Optimism can be charmingly naïve. They didn’t. If anything, they became more absurd. So when the project finally took shape, the ‘working title’ stubbornly proved to be the right one. Still, I didn’t want to dwell on the ‘ugly times’ part, even if it feels rather well documented.

For me, beauty has always mattered, but now it feels essential. Not as decoration, but as something deeper, more personal, something that helps people endure and move forward. Rather than offering answers, I wanted the presentation to plant questions: Why do we need beauty? What is it, really? The answers vary depending on where you stand. And the palazzo itself has a strong point of view. It doesn’t just host the works; it argues with them. That dialogue begins immediately in the portego, with a monumental sculpture by Peter Buggenhout, built from scraps and discarded materials yet strangely poetic and forceful. It’s beautiful, but not politely so. It nudges you to look closer, and perhaps think harder about the mind behind it. Artists, makers, artisans, I don’t draw sharp lines between them. They’re all, in their own ways, in the business of making sense of things. Or at least, of making the questions more interesting.

“Beauty will save the world” is a mantra turned slogan, endlessly reproduced, even flattened onto T-shirts. Do you think it means something, or is it just little more than a catchphrase?

No, there’s real depth to it. Beauty matters to me, profoundly. Defining it, of course, is another story; it shifts from person to person. And a beautiful person isn’t simply a pretty one, but someone with warmth, with humanity. That’s what I want to show: warmth, and what beauty can do to help us cope with reality, rather than escape it. When it came to fashion, I knew it had to be part of the exhibition. In a way, this is a transition show, one foot in my previous life, the other testing the next. So the choices felt instinctive. I turned to Christian Lacroix’s couture, older pieces, some rarely seen, because they carry both history and exuberance. Alongside them, Comme des Garçons’s more recent works, which behave less like clothing and more like sculpture that just happens to be wearable, in theory, at least.

Then I encountered the work of Ayham Hassam, a young designer based in Ramallah, and his words stopped me: “We, as Palestinians, don’t get the luxury of turning away. But we also can’t only mourn. You don’t survive if you stay mourning. That’s why beauty matters. That’s why fashion matters.” That was it. It was exactly what I wanted to say. His work carries layers of meaning, urgency, and resilience, all achieved with almost no budget, which, if anything, makes it more powerful. Including his pieces felt not only right, but necessary. And inviting younger artists and makers is part of that same impulse: not just to exhibit beauty, but to support those who are still in the act of shaping it.

You’ve already proven yourself a compelling curator; your 2014 exhibition at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris was exceptional, centered on your own work. For this first outing of the Fondazione, what is the curatorial vision guiding you? And how did you go about bringing together some 200 works, so diverse in medium, period, and voice, into a coherent whole?

I’ve never been terribly interested in labels: established name, emerging talent, artist, artisan. I look at the work itself: what it is, how it speaks, what story it insists on telling. Of course, I was slightly terrified of getting lost. My previous exhibition was a map of my own mind; this time, I had the dangerous freedom of choosing anyone. But the path revealed itself quickly. I began gathering works: old loves, new discoveries, people I’d met, others stumbled upon on social media, a kind of personal archaeology of the past few years. What mattered was that it all made sense together. Each piece needed some conversation with the palazzo, its beauty, its layers, its contradictions. Not everyone hears the same conversation, of course. Some people love it, some don’t, and some see things I never intended. That’s part of the point: beauty is not a unanimous vote. There are threads of memento mori, of vanitas, of beauty that unsettle as much as they seduce. It’s an emotional landscape, putting it together felt a bit like assembling a family, albeit one with strong personalities and occasional disagreements. If it works, visitors won’t leave with a single message, but with fragments, something that lingers, even quietly, after they’ve walked through.

Patrick Vangheluwe, your longtime partner and co-founder of the Fondazione, just remarked, “There’s beauty that hurts.” Would you say that this idea is one of the underlying threads through the exhibition?

I think there are many kinds of beauty, but yes, a fair amount of it does ‘hurt,’ in the sense that it unsettles you, makes you think, even slightly destabilizes you. ‘Hurts’ may be a strong word, but it captures something of that tension.

Take Steven Shearer’s large-scale work in the first salon on the Piano Nobile: a face in sleep, or perhaps not quite sleep. Perhaps it’s the face of someone who passed away. It’s serene, almost luminous, and at the same time loaded, eerie. It opens the exhibition like a question you can’t quite answer. The space is bathed in dark light. Around it, the dialogue continues with Codognato’s memento mori, a golden ring where a skull is wrapped in the same hood the face in sleep is wearing. And a stark black sculptural piece by Rei Kawakubo boasts a plexi headpiece shimmering like the chandeliers above, flanked by an extraordinary couture gown by Christian Lacroix. All of this unfolds under a ceiling celebrating the Victory of Light over Darkness by Jacopo Guarana, a scholar of Tiepolo, which also suggests how much darkness likes to hide inside the light.

There’s a kind of creative madness in that layering: something almost seductive, that makes you ask, “what exactly am I looking at?” And that question felt important. It echoes the same artistic passion that once animated the palazzo itself: the stucco of the Camerino d’Oro, the gilding, the grotesques, the theatrical excess. A place built on intensity, not restraint.

What’s striking is that this energy hasn’t disappeared. Young makers today carry the same kind of creative audacity. Technology is part of it now, but not as a replacement; it’s absorbed into the hand, the mind, the gesture. Nothing here is about returning to some romantic past of pure craftsmanship. It’s about how head, heart, and hand still work together, now with a few more tools on the table. In the end, I don’t think the point is to separate art, craft, or machine. Those categories feel increasingly unhelpful. Everything here is driven by vision, and that, for me, is the only distinction that really matters.

Fashion here feels almost like a punctuation mark, and at the same time the spine of the visual narrative. You’ve deliberately limited yourself to just three designers, when you could have drawn from many more. What led you to that focus on Comme des Garçons, Ayham Hassam, and Christian Lacroix?

Christian Lacroix was pure creative electricity, almost reckless in the best sense. Working with him felt like watching ideas arrive faster than they could be sewn: always more layers, more ornament, more life. An extraordinary talent, but also an extraordinarily kind man, and that combination is rare. I still treasure those moments we worked together; they were as generous as they were intense.

Then there is Comme des Garçons, where Rei Kawakubo keeps pushing form into something closer to emotion than clothing. The pieces feel almost sculptural and poetic, especially when paired with Julien’s headpieces, hovering between the theoretical and the wearable, like ideas that have decided to take physical shape. I’m not sure she’ll love that description, but I hope she’ll forgive me.

And then there is Ayham Hassam, whose work carries a very different intensity: loaded with meaning, urgency, and lived reality. Nothing ornamental for ornament’s sake, every gesture has weight.

With Lacroix, there is also a very personal dimension. His archive, around 2,000 couture pieces, has passed through various hands after his bankruptcy, first through a more commercial phase, and now, fortunately, under the stewardship of owners that are carefully restoring and reorganizing it. When I read that, it felt almost like a dream: the possibility of working again with some of his most important pieces, properly preserved, properly seen.

Downstairs, there is even a short film by Lisa Immordino Vreeland on Lacroix and his importance to couture. It felt of essence to include it, because I owe him something. Our 2019 collaborative show in Paris never really had its moment, as COVID intervened just as we were planning to bring it to New York, to Bergdorf Goodman. It simply vanished into postponement. So in a way, this is that moment finally happening. A belated spotlight, but a necessary one.

Also on display is a Lacroix couture jacket with a rather storied past: it appeared on the November 1988 cover of US Vogue, Anna Wintour’s very first issue as editor in chief. The image, shot by Peter Lindbergh, featured model Michaela Bercu wearing a Christian Lacroix haute couture jacket with a beaded cross, casually paired with a pair of Guess jeans.

That cover marked a real turning point: it pulled couture out of the hushed salons and dropped it into global culture. Suddenly, a $10,000 jacket was being worn not in a gilded room, but on a young woman with a real body, a visible belly, and a pair of $50 jeans. Couture, in other words, met everyday life and didn’t quite know what had hit it. The beaded cross added another layer of tension, a religious symbol sitting right at the center of a very modern visual contradiction, making the image even more charged. Here, the jacket is shown against a composition of Codognato crosses, which quietly echoes that same dialogue: sacred symbols, fashion, and reality all colliding in the same frame, without asking permission.

Definitely that image was the epitome of beauty as a provocative force.

Beauty can be provocative and controversial, and I hope people leave the presentation seeing it a little differently than when they arrived. Of course, beauty can still be offered as escape. But in the times we’re living in, that feels a bit too lazy. Retreating into beauty just to switch the world off is comforting, but not at all interesting.

What I’m more drawn to is beauty that resists that function, beauty that interrupts rather than anesthetizes, or sanitizes. We’re not pretending this exhibition will change the world; it won’t. But it might shift how people look at things, even slightly. And that, these days, already feels like something. Because the idea of beauty as something serene, archaic, perfectly balanced, that feels out of reach now. Beauty today is more complicated, more layered. It can sit alongside sadness, contradiction, even regret.

Take the Pisani family story: The Victory of Lightness over Darkness was not a simple depiction of triumph, but an allegory shaped by a far more tangled, painful family history. Nothing purely decorative there; everything carries a shadow. And perhaps that’s the point: beauty isn’t an exit anymore. It’s a place where complexity insists on staying visible.

“The Only True Protest Is Beauty” will be open to the public from April 25, 2026, at the Dries Van Noten Fondazione in Venice. Full details regarding reservations, access, and the affiliation program are available on the Fondazione’s website.

This piece has been condensed and edited for clarity.