That there are currently seven Belgian designers at the head of eight European fashion houses is a testament to the quality of teaching at the Royal Academy of Arts and its most famous graduates. The Antwerp Six—Dirk Bikkembergs, Ann Demeulemeester, Walter Van Beirendonck, Dries Van Noten, Dirk Van Saene, and Marina Yee—plus Martin Margiela (who graduated, with Van Beirendonck, a year before the rest, and is sometime referred to as the seventh member of the group) put Belgium on the fashion map and laid a path for the new generation to follow.
Forty years after this group of former classmates took a caravan to London to show their wares, and were dubbed the Antwerp Six because of the unpronounceability of their names, MoMu is dedicating an exhibition to the group. The lore around the Six, who never operated as a group, has only grown over the years. Part of this can be attributed to a broader, insatiable ’90s nostalgia, but there’s more to it than that. All of these designers fall into the independent category, a segment of the industry that feels increasingly endangered with continued corporatization. They represent a DIY approach to building a business, and they represent freedom.
“The Antwerp Six” exhibition is organized in two parts; the first tracks the coming up of the group and how the efforts of Geert Bruloot a retailer, curator, and generally fairy godfather, and initiatives on the part of the Belgian government gave the designers a leg up. Each of them has also been given an area to curate as they like. The last of these booths belongs to Ann Demeulemeester, whose designs had a mesmerizing and melancholy poetry to them that existed beyond the borders of gender. “There has to be a balance between your creativity, the things you are making, your emotion, your heart, but also I wanted to make something that was useful,” she said. Demeulemeester has generously shared her singular journey in fashion with Vogue.com.
From Faces to Fashion
To start with, I was not so interested in fashion. I first studied art for three years, and what I liked best was to draw portraits. I was intrigued by certain faces, for instance, the face of Rimbaud. I could draw him over and over again because I was so intrigued by that look, by that mystery. When you draw a portrait of a person, automatically you draw clothing too, and I was interested in who was wearing what and why. I was 16 then, and I thought, ‘Oh, maybe that is a nice profession. Maybe I can become a fashion designer. Then I can study the relation between men and their clothes.’ So that was my motivation to start.
At the Academy
I went to Antwerp and I was a bit different than the others because I didn’t know anything about fashion. I just came in and I loved drawing, so I jumped on the patternmaking and the whole thing of translating my two dimensional drawing into a three dimensional thing that became like a sculpture around the body.
I was working like crazy in the academy, but I was not the only one. I mean, there were six, seven, other people who were also very ambitious and working really hard and very seriously. It was special because sometimes a combination of people creates a certain energy that is very stimulating for everybody; so there was a healthy, competitive atmosphere. I was in school with the other five [Dirk Bikkembergs, Walter Van Beirendonck, Dries Van Noten, Dirk Van Saene, and Marina Yee] and also with Martin Margiela, and it was a group that quickly connected. We were the ones always working, but sometimes we were also partying together; it was a group of friends. And then after that, we all graduated; I think Walter and Martin graduated in ’80 and me and Dries and Dirks and Marina, we graduated in ’81. Even during our studies—when I look at it now—it was already very clear that everybody had his own individual style, that we were all different people, but all ambitious.
La Belgique, c’est chic?
The thing about Belgium not having a [fashion] identity—I saw it as an advantage. There was no Belgian fashion, in fact, it didn’t exist besides some commercial labels like raincoats or things like that. No, there was not a Belgian fashion identity at all. If you are born in Milan or in Paris, people expect something from you—a certain style, or…but in fact I felt really free because I didn’t have a backpack on my shoulders. I’m from Belgium, I came from nowhere, I was completely free and I could make what I want. I could invent myself, let’s say, so I saw that as an advantage—voilà!
Basic Training
Two weeks [after graduation] I was already working with a raincoat manufacturer in Belgium called Bartsons—a bit of a Burberry-style thing. It was not what I was dreaming of, but it was very good to learn all the practical and the other side—not creating—but all the rest I had to learn. How do you do that, being a fashion designer and making a project and putting it on the market? I stayed there for, I think, five years, until the day that my son was born.
Family Values
I was born in Flanders and I came to Antwerp when I was 16. I was already together with Patrick [Robyn, a photographer and the designer’s husband] and when you come to adulthood together, you discuss everything. We were both very artistic minds and we were always working together in fact and talking and trying to understand what we liked, what we didn’t like. Patrick was a photographer and I was doing this fashion thing, but at a certain point he said, ‘This fashion will split us because with my photography, I have to go abroad, you have to go [elsewhere], let’s stay together. I will stop this photography, I will only do photos for you. Let’s concentrate on one thing.’ We were a strong duo, and I also couldn’t have done the same things alone that I did with him. My husband is a real artist and he is so inspiring and every day we still try to have a good idea to impress each other, which is very stimulating.
I decided I wanted to have a child first, because I thought, ‘Imagine that my fashion thing works, I will never have a child in my life.’ So I agreed with my husband, Patrick, to have a child first and then start with a collectsion. The day that my son Victor was born, I stopped at my commercial job.
Government Work
I think it was in ’82, the Belgian government had the idea that they had to do something to save the Belgium textile industry…. They thought it wasn’t working because there was no link with creation, so they wanted to invent something to bring more creativity to the manufacturers. They invented a prize, which is called the Golden Spindle [Gouden Spoel]. As a designer, you could participate, and they would give you a contact of a manufacturer and you’d get some free meters of linen or they [manufacture your design].
They did that contest several times and we all participated immediately because we thought, ‘Yeah, it’s nice, we have a reason to make a little collectsion.” We were all selected. I won the first Golden Spindle and then the year after I participated again because I liked it to continue. I think Dirk Van Saene and Dirk Bikkembergs also won Golden Spindles, but what was important is that due to that contest, we were able to continue a little bit and to make things and show it to the world without big responsibilities, just trying out things.
The Belgian government also decided to go abroad. [In 1985], they went with us to Tsukuba, Japan, to the World’s Fair, and we had a little show there. I remember very well, I married Patrick on Saturday and Sunday we left for Japan and it opened our eyes because it’s another world in Japan if you come from Belgium.
À Londres
At a certain point, the Golden Spindles were done. We wanted to continue, we wanted really to be real, not making clothes for a contest, but to make clothes to put on the market, to show to the world. We were all very naive, but very ambitious. So everybody tried to make a collectsion and Geert Bruloot [who co-owned a shoe shop in Antwerp at the time, acted as “troupe leader” to the Six, and is a co-curator of the MoMu] said, ‘Let’s rent a caravan together and then we can go to London.’ The others had already decided to go, but I was pregnant and I didn’t have a collectsion yet, the only thing I had ready was sunglasses. So they went to London and they took my sunglasses. [It was] in ’86 that they went to London, but I wasn’t there, I was giving birth to my son.
The third time I had my collectsion ready. At first I was hesitating because my goal was to make a collectsion and to go to Paris, but then I thought, ‘Okay, maybe it’s nice to go to London,’ because London seemed a bit nicer to me in the sense that if you make a mistake, it’s maybe not such a big deal in London.
I spent every penny I had to make a little collectsion and we went to London and we had this little stand at the British designer show. My husband made photos—big photos—and he put them on a little stand and we put a table, two chairs and one rack of clothes. It would be all or nothing because we spent everything we had. It was very special because after five minutes, somebody came in, sat down and started to write orders, and it went on like that for four days.
It was amazing. My first client was Barneys. They sat down and they said, ‘Let’s make an order.’ And I said, ‘Yes, okay.’ And each time I had to convince them to pay upfront or to give me a letter of credit to be able to produce because I was completely self-supporting everything. But they all agreed and thanks to that I could start. I produced my first season and I scotched-taped the boxes, I telexed the invoices because faxes didn’t exist yet—can you imagine?
Each to Their Own
People couldn’t pronounce our names, it was impossible, forget it, they didn’t even start. They just saw that there were six new designers, that all six were very different, and everybody liked somebody of the six, and they just called us the Six because it was so much easier, and it was special because it was six designers coming out of a country where nobody expected anything from. I remember my first clients asked me, ‘Belgium, where is that?’ Even the first time I was in London, I had to explain where Belgium was.
And then it became like a little bit of a myth because everybody had heard of the Six, so every single interview I have done all my life, the first question was about the Antwerp Six. I went crazy; but okay, I’m used to it now, voilà. It has become the story that speaks to the imagination—that there is a group of six kids who just start all by themselves doing everything themselves and everybody in his own way. And some of us had a backer, others had nothing. I mean, we worked to be there. It’s unimaginable in the world we live in now if you see how things function now. Everything is different, but okay, I mean, every time has its particularities.
I see that young kids, especially young designers like 20, 22 and so on, are very, very interested in the Six because they want to understand how you do it on your own. And although you cannot give advice, what I always say is that I think that now there are many ways to work as a designer in the fashion industry, but the thing is you have to find your own way. And you just have to believe that if you make good work, it will find its way, no matter how. And so for me, that’s the only thing: work, work, work. It doesn’t go by itself—and do good work. If you do good work one day or another, it will find its way, but you have to be patient, you know. It took me 10 years, 10 years of hard work before I could do my first show. Now people think it’s normal to do that immediately. Do the things when you are ready for it.
Paris, Finally
It kept on going well and then I decided I felt ready to go to Paris. I participated two or three times in a fair called Atmosphère. Little by little, step by step, it went really well and at a certain point I had enough money to do a show. So I searched for a contact for a press agent and I found Michèle Montagne. I was very nervous [when I met her] with my drawings under my arm. I asked: ‘Do you want to help me with press?’ And she said, ‘Yeah, come in. I was expecting you. I knew you would come.’ That was really very beautiful. And since then, until today, she’s my best friend, my buddy.
Michèle helped me a lot and was really somebody who understood who I was, what I was doing. We did our first show in ’91, and it was amazing because since the very first show, it was really a very big success. I was really doing my very, very best, but also I was very surprised because I was just doing what I wanted to do and I didn’t fit in the fashion that was there at that moment at all. But I think I hit a little chord.
I remember—now you will really laugh with me—but I remember that one day these two very chic guys from Paris asked me to do a couture collectsion for a big house with a big name. And I said to the man, ‘I would love to do couture, but why can’t I do Ann Demeulemeester couture?’ They said: ‘Okay, we understand. You are a pure one. Allez, let’s go.’ And that was it. It’s funny, but I was serious about it. I thought, why should I do couture for a big name that is from a guy who is dead? Why can’t I do my own couture? I didn’t understand back then…anyway, that was my naive mind. That little sentence, I will never forget.
Work Plan
Every collectsion I started with everything I didn’t have time to do the collectsion before, and I always started immediately because there were lots of things I couldn’t finish or I was not able to show yet. And so it was a constant stream of working on my own label, on my own style, and every collectsion was like a step forward each time. The fact that people were appreciating what I was doing gave me the strength and the energy to continue. It was also a big stress because it’s fantastic to be appreciated; but on the other hand, it’s also a pressure because people were expecting so much from me and I each time had to fill it in. So it gave me enormous pressure, but also a positive drive. Each time you try to achieve something new and without losing your soul, that was very important to me.
There has to be a balance between your creativity, the things you are making, your emotion, your heart, but also I wanted to make something that was useful. I never made showpieces. Everything I made was shown, and it was also produced because it was important to me that there was this reality. And I made clothes I was dreaming of myself [only] to discover later on that those were the clothes that sold best because there were other women like me who wanted that and who were missing that. I think it’s very important to have respect for your customers and for the people you are making clothes for.
Case Study: Spring 1997
For that particular collectsion I had an attitude in my mind: like a very nonchalant girl that has a very chic shirt and it glides off her shoulder and it’s so beautiful because you see only a little bit of the shoulder and the shirt doesn’t drop, it just stays miraculously. I thought, ‘Okay, I cannot just take a man’s shirt because then it looks baggy.’ Again, a problem. How can I make a shirt that makes you feel this very fragile woman’s body in this big volume and how can we reveal a little bit of the shoulder without being vulgar—because I still think that the most sexy thing is the thing that you don’t show. I wanted to invent a new kind of sexuality, if you want, in clothing. And I thought, ‘Okay, maybe I can do like half of my shirt fitted and half of my shirt masculine. And the fitted part, I can keep it close to the body maybe with a ribbon that you don’t see and the other half can hang. So the gravity will work to the left and to the right. It was an interesting study, I must say.
People always say about my work that it is androgynous, but it’s not androgynous to me. I think that every man or woman has masculine and feminine elements. I see that in myself, I see that in my husband, and it’s beautiful if as a designer, I can have this duality in my clothes without making the person ridiculous. Like I say, I always have a lot of respect and I want dignity. So if I can have this duality, which you have in a character, you have that in your clothes too, and then you come back to the study of character and clothes, that’s a bit what I was trying to do.
Case Study: Shoes
Maybe [it is difficult to] understand now, because fashion is so much further along, but at the beginning [of my career] you had two things, you had men’s shoes and you had women who walked on heels. Manolo Blahnik…and all these kinds of shoes, beautiful but not for me. So the problem I had to solve was how can I make a shoe that makes me taller without having to wear heels because I didn’t like them and I couldn’t walk with them—and I’m very little and I wanted to be taller. I started thinking, ‘What can I do? What can I do?’ And then I thought, if I can invent a shoe for a man that with a heel [with which a] man is not ridiculous, then I will not be ridiculous either. I started to mold myself a last and I made heels with clay that I would put on my feet and look in the mirror and that’s how my shoe collectsion started. I was very, very much hands on. And so it went with every piece of clothing. That was my job, doing a suggestion and making something that is not already there with respect and…hoping that you make something that means something for somebody.
There is a journalist from Ukraine, a woman, and when the war broke out, she wrote me a letter to thank me. I was so worried about her. And she said, ‘Yes, but I’m saving myself. I’m running and I’m really trying to escape, but I feel so strong because I have put on your boots and they help me to be strong.’ Can you imagine? Never in my life have I had a more beautiful compliment than that…. Goosebumps.
“The Antwerp Six” at MoMu
I don’t like to look back; it seems so strange to do an exhibition about something that happened over the course of three years, 40 years ago. After these three years came things that were far more important to me, but on the other hand, I couldn’t say no because then I would block the whole thing.
The beginning of the exhibition is the history of the Six, which spans three years— like the school and then the going to London and all that—and then you have six spaces where every designer got a podium and you could do whatever you wanted. There are a lot of things happening; you can imagine six completely different tastes and different designers. I think people will discover that we are so different. I’m at the end of the exhibition and I decided to show the real thing—that is clothes to me—and I made a selection of looks from ’92 to 2014. I made a spontaneous selection, I selected them just on intuition, and put them together. I have already dressed the mannequins and I was really pleased with how they came out. There are—I don’t know, how many years, 20 years difference—and they look like one collectsion and that was so nice. I didn’t make a collectsion, but I created a style and that was…I was happy with that. And they don’t disturb each other, which is special because there’s so many years in between those outfits, I just put them together and that’s it. And then I show one photo, one portrait of a face, that my husband made, and that for us represents the spirit of the Ann Demeulemeester woman. Since we only show clothes, that portrait was important to me. It started with a portrait and there is a portrait again.
This interview has been edited and condensed for claritys.
Ann Demeulemeester: A Life in Fashion
