Antwerp Six
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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The Antwerp Six refers to a group of influential clothing designers from Antwerp's Royal Academy of Fine Arts that emerged in the 1980s and presented a distinct vision for fashion that established Antwerp as a notable location for fashion design.
The group of designers known as the 'Antwerp Six' (so named because all of them were graduates of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp), who first emerged in the 1980s, came to prominence in the 1990s. Three of the most influential of the group were Ann Demeulemeester, Dries van Noten, and Walter Van Beirendonck. Ann Demeulemeester, from her first collection in 1991, demonstrated a great deal of confidence and inventiveness. Naturally inclined to understatement, she built her designs on contradictions, introducing contrasting elements into her fluid and streamlined fashions, which appealed to women who dressed, above all, to please themselves. The work of Dries van Noten was founded on a solid mastery of the art of tailoring, to which the young designer added discreet touches of fantasy in a highly personal style. Managing to be both classical and original, his fashions appealed to those who preferred to express their individuality rather than slavishly follow trends. Walter Van Beirendonck, who erupted onto the fashion scene in 1995, produced decidedly futuristic designs under his label W & LT (Wild and Lethal Trash). Deliberately using fabrics developed by the very latest technologies, in violently contrasting colors, he produced clothes that were full of erotic and sadomasochistic references, touched with a caustic adolescent humor. His highly distinctive approach related to a resurgence of anti-fashion, but this time an anti-fashion with nothing in the least ethnic about its origins, instead based on science fiction that provided the inspiration for displays of such high-spirited provocation.
List
- Walter Van Beirendonck
- Ann Demeulemeester
- Dries van Noten
- Dirk Van Saene
- Dirk Bikkembergs
- Marina Yee
Martin Margiela is often erroneously credited as member of the Antwerp Six too, though he was only part of the second generation, together with designers such as Lieve van Gorp.
See also
