IN THE COUNTRY of Belgium, in the meadows outside Antwerp, in a garden stalky with delphiniums, the fashion designer Dries Van Noten is considering a rose. Van Noten, who is 59, is one of those rare people who actually resembles his photographs; not coincidentally, perhaps, he also has a face and a form that look like they might be easy to draw, a single pen line dragging down the page, an image blooming beneath it: He is slim but not skinny, tallish but not tall, graying but not gray, with a spare, symmetrical, planar face and small, dark eyes. His hair is neat, parted to one side and scraped back from his forehead, but the effect — like that of his white button-down shirt — feels less severe than, somehow, touching; one can see in him the echoes of the good Catholic schoolboy he once was.