When they went to London—unlike other student newcomers of the time—the six were already practiced at producing their own branding imagery. They’d got that together on their own initiative in class. “We weren’t taught that. Everybody had their own photographer we found in school. All those teams were formed together back then. And of course, Ann Demeulemeester already had her boyfriend Patrick Robyn.”
Demeulemeester and Robyn married before she started her brand. His evocative photography, capturing many of the designers’ early collections, is all over the exhibition and the accompanying book. Their son, Victor Robyn, who many will remember as a child, walking with his mom at the end of her Paris shows in the ’90s, is the exhibition’s graphic designer.
Demeulemeester herself was standing in the darkened room she’d designed. Tall, attenuated silhouettes in black standing on smoky mirrored platforms emerged from the dark. Long bias skirts, sliding leather belts, feathered jewelry, elegantly asymmetric jackets, the glint of metallic knitwear. “I wanted an atmosphere like you are in the night, and the silhouettes are standing on water. And it’s a very cold moonlight.”
It crystallized everything about Demeuleemester’s passionate career—her integrity, the wholeness of the world she created until she left her brand in 2014, to pursue her art and furniture projects. “I selected them just like it was my friends that I was picking, okay, yes, let’s take her. Let’s take him. Not thinking too much,” she smiled. “Just showing what is the real thing, the clothes. What Ann Demeuleemeester is about.”
Walter Van Beirendonck was a year ahead of the others at the Academy, in the same class as Martin Margiela. “It was great, because we both came from a small village without knowing what was going to happen in the school.” In fact, the only thing that sparking off each other produced—as well as joining Antwerp’s underground performance scene, in Van Beirendonck’s case—was a determination to be completely himself. His cheerful, colorful, playful collections are a pioneering statement of queer pride against dark times, championing safe sex and anti-racism. They make as much impact now—in fact, they’re a collecting craze today—as they did in the late ’80s. “For me, it’s not just making clothes, it’s telling stories, but also showing engagement in the world.” In the exhibition, a digital “Walter” face, implanted in a hoodie, conducts a conversation with his imaginary robot friend Puk-Puk, which stands opposite. Walter’s cheery face beams out hope in creativity to the new generation facing difficult times.