“A Class 1981″. The year that put Belgian fashion well and truly on the global map, as the ‘Antwerp Six’ graduated from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts. Six fashion designers who marked the beginning of a revolution, exposing their work to new markets, new scrutiny and new praise when they threw it all in a van and drove to London to exhibit in 1988. NºA’s Dirk Van Saene was one of them, as was the school’s current director Walter Van Beirendonck, with Ann Demeulemeester, Dries Van Noten, Dirk Bikkembergs & Marina Yee completing the gang.
The opening pages of NºA pay tribute to this legacy, as Desiree Heiss (one half of BLESS) teamed up with Austrian photographer Bettina Komenda to shoot a selection of pieces from the Antwerp Six (and their supplementary 7th member, Martin Margiela) from their Fall Winter 2001-02 collections – twenty years after their graduation.
Models Emily & Kristina both offer a sweet and unreserved demeanor, lending a fresh and casual air to Bettina’s black and white images, and lightening the mood of the heavily textural pieces and experimental, oversized silhouettes. Although their aesthetics may never be labelled as similar or comparable, this shoot seems to capture an accurate through-line across their body of work, revealing the progressive use of texture, bold graphics, androgynous forms, and subversion of conventional ideals of clothing.
Whether it is in Dirk Van Saene’s trompe l’oeil sweater with a knitted tie, Martin Margiela’s exaggerated, large leather waistcoat or in the military and graphical mash-up of Walter Van Beirendonck’s puffy patchwork top, Desiree has divined the true sense of fun, experimentation and an underlying rebellious spirit that carried each of these mavericks to their own independent success stories.
Above image: Ann Demeulemeester.
Above: Dries Van Noten, Dirk Van Saene.
Above: Dirk Bikkembergs.
Above: Maison Martin Margiela.
Above: Ann Demeulemeester, Dirk Van Saene.
Above: Dirk Bikkembergs, Maison Martin Margiela.
Above: aestheticterrorists by Walter Van Beirendonck.
Above: Dries Van Noten.
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