Couture club: Little Belgium is a big player in fashion

Belgium may be small, but Belgian fashion is having something of a moment and designers here are doing better than ever, with young designers setting up shop and finding their way to buyers everywhere from the US to Asia.

If you think Belgian fashion, you tend to think Antwerp Six. This group of designers wowed critics as they shot to fame in the 1980s. The names of Ann Demeulemeester, Walter Van Beirendonck and their peers have become synonymous with the avant-garde style their country is now known for.

"But Belgian fashion didn’t start with the Antwerp Six," says Dieter Van den Storm, who recently curated a Bozar exhibition on Belgian fashion. "The story begins in the 1930s with Norine, the first Belgian couture house. Until that time, the upper classes had turned to Parisian designers whenever they wanted to indulge in sartorial splurging."

When journalist and arts enthusiast Paul-Gustave Van Hecke met dressmaker Honorine Deschrijver, the two decided to combine their talents and design couture made in Belgium instead of copied from the French capital. Thanks to Van Hecke’s ties to the art world, the couple collaborated with the great surrealist artists of the day, including René Magritte, who created graphics and promotional pictures for the house.

Norine Couture thrived between the wars, but after World War Two, Van Hecke and Deschrijver had to close their business for financial reasons. Their modernist and local take on high fashion led the way for many others.

Some of today’s biggest brands are even older than Norine. Delvaux, Belgium’s most renowned accessory label, was founded in 1829 and supplied trunks and leather goods to the court of King Leopold II. At the turn of the century, the house began producing handbags, and models such as the Tempête and Brillant are now coveted by fashionistas across the globe. Delvaux also has a thing for Magritte. In 2008, the brand introduced a version of the Brillant that read Ceci n’est pas un Delvaux, a nod to Magritte’s famed painting The Treachery of Images.

Another well-known house with a long history is Natan, the go-to label of the Belgian royal family. Established in 1930 as Maison de Couture Paul Natan, it was reinvented in the 1980s by Edouard Vermeulen. The designer rented a space to showcase his interior designs in the existing boutique on Brussels’ Avenue Louise and found himself so inspired that he took over the fashion house and renamed it Natan within a year.

Antwerp Six

But 1986 is the year Belgian fashion really took flight. A group of young designers who graduated from the Royal Academy in Antwerp in the early 1980s travelled to London together to present their collections. They were lauded by the international press for their radical aesthetic and dubbed the Antwerp Six because of their tricky names: Walter Van Beirendonck, Ann Demeulemeester, Dries Van Noten, Dirk Van Saene, Dirk Bikkembergs and Marina Yee.

“They seemingly appeared on the scene out of nowhere, but in fact, they enjoyed great support from the Belgian government,” Van den Storm says. “The unique thing is that they all managed to establish their own label in those years and are still active.”

Van Beirendonck is head of the academy where he once graduated, his partner Van Saene advocates Belgian fashion in his boutique DVS, and Demeulemeester is loved by musicians including Patti Smith and PJ Harvey. Van Noten opened his first exhibition at Les Arts Décoratifs in Paris in 2014. Bikkembergs and Yee are less in the limelight these days, but all six reunited for jury duty at the Royal Academy’s graduation show in 2013, to mark the fashion department’s 50th birthday.

Just as Belgian fashion didn’t start with the Six, it didn’t end with them either. Many other designers have emerged and found critical acclaim over the years.

“Martin Margiela is often seen as a seventh member of the group, since he graduated around the same time,” says Van den Storm. “Today, Maison Margiela is in Italian hands and led by John Galliano. This goes to show the new scale on which fashion operates: Belgian houses have become global brands.”

Raf Simons is often regarded as a prime example of the Belgian designer: soft-spoken, humble, innovative and immensely talented. “I think those are key elements of the Belgian fashion DNA,” Van den Storm says, “and I’m not just talking about designers. Photographers such as Willy Vanderperre, make-up artists like Peter Philips and Inge Grognard, Belgian supermodels... they’re all free spirits who believe in hard work and a strong vision.”

There may even be a historical explanation for these shared characteristics: “We were subjugated so often that we became a nation of survivors, accustomed to taking risks.”

Young talent

Wim Bruynooghe is a young designer who graduated from Antwerp in 2013. “It may sound haughty, but to me the Royal Academy is the best school in the world,” he says. “The focus is entirely on the creative aspect. I discovered my voice as a designer there and found out things I didn’t even know I had in me.” Bruynooghe recently opened his flagship boutique on Frankrijklei in the centre of Antwerp. He shares the building with designers Christian Wijnants and Minju Kim, who rent studio space there.

For him, what connects all these creative people is independence. “I think Belgian fashion is so strong because our designers follow their own instincts instead of trends,” he says. “It’s about the story you want to tell, rather than just another sweater.”

One upcoming designer who happens to use sweaters to tell her story is Ilke Cop. She graduated from the academy of Sint-Niklaas in 2014. “In Belgium, there are a lot of cool initiatives that support young designers,” she says, “but it’s still difficult to start a business.”

Is there such a thing as a Belgian fashion scene? “I have always been a proud fan of Belgium and I try to follow what my peers are up to,” she says. “On the French-speaking as well as the Flemish side of the language barrier.” Political differences between the north and the south of the country seem not to exist in the wonderful world of fashion.

This article was first published in ING Expat Time