Word: antwerp
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...fared pretty well: Karl Lagerfeld did a stint in the early 1970s; so did Dolce & Gabbana 15 years later. Today the fashion director scouts the fashion schools because, she says, young designers are already too commercial to be interesting to her. The Flanders Fashion Institute in Antwerp is famous for turning out some of the most creative minds in fashion. But she can't get them to Italy, not even for a plum job like this. Complains Lusuardi: "The goal of the school is to train them to work only with their own name." Most of the graduates do just...
...Recent students, including Veronique Branquinho, Raf Simons, Bernhard Willhelm and the duo at A.F. Vandevorst, also set up shop in Antwerp; they travel the 400 km to Paris twice a year to show at the Prêt-à-Porter collections. This isolationist instinct doesn't end at choice of headquarters. The graduates from Flanders also shun mainstream publicity, rarely granting interviews and often refusing to be photographed. The reason? They say they want their work - the image of their designs - to speak for itself...
...image grows in Antwerp, does anyone see it? Not really, outside hard-core fashion circles. The clothes of these freshly minted designers are, for the most part, amazing. And surprisingly wearable. But big retailers are scared off, fearing these designers cannot develop a large following under their own, little-known names. "The problem with the Belgians is that they won't do press, they won't talk to anyone, they're so shy they'll barely come to meetings," said an executive in charge of filling top design jobs at established fashion houses. "I really respect them for what they...
...would think that given $5 million by the regional government to put on an exhibition to showcase Antwerp design, Van Beirendonck, a lecturer at the Fashion Institute, would have as his primary aim the promotion of the school's talented graduates - to get them some of the top posts at major fashion houses and attract shoppers to their labels. In fact, he's going about it the other way round. He says his goal is not to promote designers, but to bring the over-commercialized world of fashion around to his way of thinking. "I want to underline...
...result, Mode 2001 Landed-Geland, a series of four exhibitions staged througout Antwerp for the next four months, is a means of exploring where the creative energy of the Antwerp designers comes from. The series of exhibitions includes things not normally associated with fashion shows, like helicopter rides, videos and slogan-less billboards. The most popular and the largest of the exhibitions, "Mutilate," is housed in the city's contemporary art museum, MUHKA. Visitors are, says Van Beirendonck, confronted with examples of the way people in cultures around the world alter their bodies in the name of fashion. There...