The Antwerp Six

The build-up to this specific day of March has been brewing and almost boiling in the back of my mind ever since the first notice of a special project being in the making to celebrate the 40th anniversary of that reunion of forces that placed a tiny city called Antwerp in the front line of an industry where the more flamboyant and opulent your origin is, the more attention you will likely be paid. Change the glam and the glitter for the cold and grey skies that saw six names start shaping a revolution without even being aware of it by just submitting to the laborious, tortuous but addicting and passionate act of becoming a fashion student; add a heavier weight, a Royal Academy fashion student.

It's funny how I was just going to describe the place where countless fashion wonders have come out of by saying that it shares a street and almost a corner with the store of stores, the Dries Van Noten flagship boutique. Needless to say, there was no Dries Van Noten store in this era that pertains to us right now, forty years ago, because said Dries was in the academy, still learning and unaware of what the future held. In the same classroom and equally unaware were other students by the names of Ann Demeulemeester, Dirk Van Saene, Marina Yee and Dirk Bikkembergs. These being the early years of the fashion department of the institution that has been active for centuries, it is a given how the classes were small in number; nothing compared to what they are now. This caused the classes to be shared with two students from a year above, Walter Van Beirendonck and Martin Margiela. 

Walter told me about this in our interview for METAL 51, saying jokingly how in a class with two students it is not hard being one of the best. Martin was in a league on his own, but Walter, alongside these other five students who distinguished themselves from the rest even from the earliest years, formed a group where the competitive spirit mixed with the enriching experience of being surrounded by equally passionate individuals fuelled the inspiration and desire to create and propelled them into delivering the best they were capable of. Like any other students, they partied, they played, and they lived, and in fashion and any creative disciplines, this is almost as important as any technical class. By feeling the pulse of the youth, the artistic scene at that particular moment, the music, the clubs, the rebels and the ideas, each universe is built above stronger pillars motivated by not only what looks nice, but what the context of the time signifies out of it. 

This is how the exhibition starts, in a room plastered around with collages, newspapers, pictures, and elements of how the 70s and 80s felt, giving us some context of what those six minds were being fed by and placing the dots that they would connect later. The scenography, by the way, was made in collaboration with Victor Robyn, son of Ann and Patrick Robyn. For the occasion of the 40th anniversary since the birth of the Antwerp Six concept, all members agreed to participate and contribute with their own personal archive of photographs, videos, letters, sketches and memorabilia which represents not only the first time that they agreed to work on something together ever since, but also brings to light a deeply personal but incredibly important side of the story, the most valuable of them all.

We can see videos of them at the academy, all young and full of life. The spark in their eyes is familiar, because it's the same they've kept up until now. We can see the first lookbooks of all six photographed by Ann's then boyfriend, now husband, Patrick, and we can see parts of their graduate projects, another topic we touched on with Walter, where he told me about his insect-inspired collection whose sketches I could finally see with my own eyes. 

We had the privilege of having Geert Bruloot, a key piece of this story, in front of us, telling us first-hand about the experiences that for us are the history of fashion but for him are fond memories of his youth and his friends. Alongside MoMu's curator, Romy Cockx, Bruloot brought to the present the story of his past, where he, as the owner of the store Louis in Antwerp, was the first to sell exclusively Belgian designers and hold the creations of these then students and who encouraged and accompanied their journey to the UK. That journey to the British Designer Show, where, after being accepted with a letter that was also at the exhibition and being placed on the top floor where almost no visitors walked by, they decided to make themselves seen and heard, created pamphlets, distributed them and started the revolution of a new type of design, one made in Belgium: unique, raw, extremely well done, full of meaning and passion. 

From these experiences that in retrospect look and sound like a coming-of-age movie but that in reality must have been as hard as working in fashion has always been, we get to know better the humans behind the names. We feel their youthful excitement of being together in Japan, the bonding but not glamorous experience of sharing two campers among a handful of people to travel all the way to Florence to exhibit their work, their immense efforts to build a name on their own inside the big tagline the world had created for them. Because they did not choose to be the Antwerp Six, the seemingly impossible task of making the tiny effort of pronouncing their names in London gave birth to the name that is now a legend, but in reality, they were a group of six individuals that understood it was easier to be seen when standing together, but that by no shape or form wanted to be thought of as one entity at all. 

The double-edged sword of being known but not by your own name started being sharper against them, and the additional effort of not only claiming your own spotlight but also actively trying to separate yourself from the big light that groups you all became a cause that, up until now, has still been fought. Luckily, the six couldn't be more different from each other even if they tried. From the first creations, the abysmal contrast in universes is made patent, and it's so deeply rooted in who they are as persons that their most recent creations and, overall, their life paths are still vastly distinctive. 

This polarity is captured to perfection in the six main parts of the exhibition, where different rooms were built to capture and to allow our immersion into their minds. From my standpoint, saying too much about this would feel like spoiling a movie before watching it, but just as a teaser or preview, expect to find Dirk Bikkembergs's bold and disruptive design, Walter Van Beirendonck's moving conversation with the future, Dirk Van Saene's version of the perfect runway, Dries Van Noten's symbolic show finales, Marina Yee's personal and magical private room and Ann Demeulemeester's pitch-black universe.

Again, this is something you must see with your own eyes and feel with your own heart. For those passionate and truly in love with fashion, the goosebumps are guaranteed. In Walter's room, one of the most impressive of the exhibition, we are witnesses of his conversation with his beloved robot Puk Puk, and as they share their memories and their hopes for the future, we couldn't help but shed a couple of tears. This, added to the overwhelming amount of material and the ever-present spirit of Marina, who left us too soon but who was involved in the construction of this exhibition up until the very end, makes this far more emotional and moving than just a showcase of events. 

"We grow, we radiate, we show everybody even in the darkest times there's light," says Walter to Puk Puk. The work these six minds have been doing for the last four decades has been perhaps one of the biggest sources of light in this industry. Six lights of different colours and shades that always shine just as brightly, that have never sacrificed their intensity and authenticity for the sake of anything, and that have no signs of wanting to be turned off. In Walter's words, "It's never goodbye; we are just starting.”