By Bent Van Looy

Rising up in Antwerp tends to warp one’s views on vogue.

This has little to do with the droves of puffer-jacketed consumers you see on the weekend, dragging themselves from the Groenplaats, central Antwerp, in the direction of the majestic Centraal Station, the place they may take their trains again to suburbia, carrying plastic baggage full of purchases from Primark and Zara.

One may blame Antwerp’s superb Golden Century (the sixteenth, should you should know), when the town amassed huge wealth, buying and selling, amongst different issues, the best materials and woven cloths on this planet.

However no, the explanation we Antwerpians develop up with the concept that excessive vogue is as commonplace as bus stops or pigeon droppings is the Royal Academy of High quality Arts – a crumbling hodgepodge of historic buildings within the coronary heart of city, the place many an aspiring artist has walked below the arch marking the boundary between the overgrown sculpture backyard contained in the Academy and the world at massive. 

In 1886, a younger hopeful was noticed on his manner out, having been turned away by the traditionalist tutorial powers that be. His title was Vincent Van Gogh.

A century later, six graduates of the just lately established vogue division handed via the exact same arch, albeit much less defeated. Having completed 4 years of coaching, this small group of younger women and men had been able to unfold their wings and conquer the world.

It’s 1986, and the gifted bunch have determined to exhibit their work on the British Designer Present in London. As a result of their names – Ann Demeulemeester, Dirk Van Saene, Marina Yee, Dries Van Noten, Walter Van Beirendonck and Dirk Bikkembergs (above, left to proper) – proved to be tongue-twisters, their work seems below the moniker ‘The Antwerp Six’. They, and extra exactly their groundbreaking concepts and designs, turned a sensation.

Ever since, vogue college students from everywhere in the world have flocked to The Six’s alma mater, hoping to take in a few of its magic vogue juice. They are often noticed, on their strategy to faculty, like shimmering goldfish in an ocean of cod. I typically stopped to stare at them once I was rising up on the streets of Antwerp within the mid-nineties.

Wearing avant-garde designer garments or insane mixtures of classic and outlandish, typically asymmetrical creations of their very own, these vogue college students blew my thoughts in the way in which they dared to face out in a crowd. They, just like the Antwerp Six and a number of the wonderful designers who adopted of their footsteps, threw open a window in the direction of the doable for me.

However, once we consider what we see on the runway of, let’s say, a Dries Van Noten males’s present, we are inclined to neglect that plenty of what’s on show (the splendour, the drama, the explosions of color) is firmly rooted within the codes and strategies of conventional tailoring.

Van Noten (who I interviewed in 2017, above) grew up in a menswear household. His grandfather began out as a tourneur (somebody who takes aside second-hand clothes, then restores and re-sells them), earlier than producing his personal materials and opening up a males’s clothes store in Antwerp, a enterprise that was ultimately taken over and expanded by Dries’ father, Hubert. Van Noten Couture, as their Kammenstraat retailer was known as, offered pretty basic fare like Zegna or Ferragamo.

As a younger boy, Dries (Dries, Raf, Ralph — all of us appear to be on a first-name foundation with these guys) typically accompanied his dad and mom on shopping for journeys to Italy, the place he absorbed the intricacies of the commerce within the showrooms of Milan and Florence.

Unhappy with the prospects of a standard profession and a straight-laced continuation of custom, Dries flourished on the Academy. Impressed by artwork, craft and the eccentric audacity of his fellow college students, he emerged as somebody who didn’t see these traditions and strategies as the tip purpose, however as a way to an finish.

To what finish? To discover the issues that moved and impressed him. Sure, Van Noten and the remainder of the Six discovered the ropes throughout the partitions of the Academy, however in addition they found that these traits had been there for use, generally abused, to be stretched out and slapped again collectively.

Their creativeness took us on a journey via artwork historical past, simply take a look at Dries Van Noten’s S/S 2001 assortment, a vibrant and really stripey evocation of David Hockney (above); and literature, see Ann Demeulemeester’s S/S 07 present, a moody homage to the poetry of Rimbaud; or much more summary notions like Walter Van Beirendonck’s darkly optimistic jousting with cartoon imagery, tribal parts and the codes of BDSM.

Sounds loopy? Maybe. Mr Van Noten would doubtless be the primary to downplay my lofty theorising; of the six, he’s maybe the one who’s rooted most firmly within the industrial actuality that spawned him. As he stated in an interview with The Talks: “We don’t make couture; we make prêt-à-porter. And I’m very strict with that.”

A ardour for strong, wearable items, lower for the ages, shines via in every thing Dries does.

I bear in mind seeing him standing in entrance of MoMu in Antwerp, ready for his 2015 Inspirations exhibition to open, and being struck by the elegant simplicity of his private type: a navy merino sweater and extensive however barely tapered chinos on high of white tennis footwear. Over time he has refined his look – rooted in British nation stylish and Ivy (just like the outsized chequered blazer he wore within the Antwerp Six promo footage in 1986) – to replicate sobriety and timeless magnificence. 

That veneration of custom additionally featured closely in Van Noten’s 17 F/W males’s present, the place the logos and labels of Fox Brothers, Lovat and Marling & Evans had been enlarged and emblazoned on sweaters and the linings of jackets, paying homage to the businesses that had provided him with supplies over the many years.

Regardless of the theme of the dream could also be, the vocabulary of basic tailoring serves as a beacon in any assortment of the Antwerp Six, bobbing to the floor once in a while to information us via the tough seas of the designers’ wildest creativeness.

Take the swimsuit above from one in all Van Noten’s final collections (S/S 24) earlier than he retired in June 2024. Lengthy thought of a grasp of color, his mixture of biscuity brown with a deep wine pink is stylish and accessible. And the fabric will enchantment to most PS readers: a slubby, silken herringbone that bears a putting resemblance to the fabric of one in all Simon’s more popular jackets.

Even somebody as futuristic and on the market as Walter Van Beirendonck understands the structure of a basic swimsuit. I used to be as soon as gifted one in all his blazers to put on whereas I carried out on stage; tartan fabric with a structured shoulder – I may’ve sworn it had been lower by a Savile Row tailor, if it weren’t for the portholes within the entrance, again and sleeves.

Outlandish? Positive. I selected to see them as peepholes into the playful soul of their creator. Or certainly: home windows in the direction of the doable.

Bent Van Looy is an Antwerp-based author, artist and musician.

The Antwerp Six fortieth anniversary retrospective opens in Antwerp’s MoMu on March twenty eighth.