Dries Van Noten spent four decades building a singular career in fashion. He was not interested in a licensing empire, logo mania, or celebrity strategies. He just made extraordinary clothes shaped by an obsessive attention to fabric, print, and history. Van Noten retired in 2024, handing his eponymous house to a successor, and almost immediately created a foundation. Its first presentation now takes place during the Biennale, in a 15th-century Venetian palazzo, and brings together more than 200 pieces of couture, jewelry, ceramics, glass, design, and art. The title derives from a song by the activist folk singer Phil Ochs, and the premise is one Van Noten has long advanced: Beauty is not a retreat from the world but a way of confronting it. —Elena Clavarino