The Critic

City of diamonds

- Hannah Betts applauds the genius of the Antwerp Six

Don’t look now, but I have experience­d my sartorial Nietzsche and the nag moment. I'm not saying I'm a philosophi­cal genius. [Whispers: I am.] However, I have been sickened, dizzied, and moved to sobbing horror by a foray abroad. This epochal event took place not in Turin, but Antwerp, where I had journeyed to supply you with a winning little number on the Antwerp Six and everyone else putting the lux into Benelux.

You know, the Antwerp Six: that posse of designers graduating from the city's Royal Academy of Fine Arts between 1980-81, who galvanised style across the globe. The Six comprised Dries Van Noten, Ann Demeulemee­ster, Dirk Van Saene, Walter Van Beirendonc­k, Dirk Bikkemberg­s, and Marina Yee.

And their jazz was resplenden­tly avant-garde: conceptual, surreal, flirting with deconstruc­tion, obsessed with craft, detail-rich and historical­ly bent, distinguis­hed by collaborat­ions across the arts; savage beauty all about. What the Birmingham Six were to flares and crazed collars, the Antwerp Six were to edgy experiment­al allure.

In 1986, this collective packed up its kit bags and headed to London's British Designer Show. Despite being ferreted away upstairs, a Barney's buyer was blown away by their genius, granting them their first order. Unable to pronounce their names, the press gave them their monicker.

Not only did sixers Van Noten and Demeulemee­ster become global phenomena, so other Belgians such as Martin Margiela (of Maison

Margiela), Raf Simons (of Jil Sander, Dior, Calvin Klein and, currently, Prada), and Saint Laurent's Anthony Vaccarello conquered the style world.

Over on the high-street, Belgian beauteousn­ess is best represente­d via the cult label Essential Antwerp. This husband-and-wife brand debuted in 1999 as a fin de siècle rebellion against drear minimalism.

Initially a line of four t-shirts, it became a vastly successful, ready-towear outfit available via 46 European stores, plus over 750 global outlets.

It landed in Blighty in 2019. Within days, its Kings Road boutique had become one of the brand's best performers, second only to its native flagship.

Essentiel Antwerp’s thing is expansive colour and/or pattern, fabulous fabrics and playful proportion, shot through with ease, plus exuberantl­y off-piste accessorie­s. (Big Bird-yellow fluffy brooches; shoulder-length, electric blue diamante earrings; zebra bags not in faux skin, but sporting dancing beasts — and those are merely the objets I crave.) Behold, serotonin dressing, at a mid-market price, with reassuring­ly eco credential­s. The label's mission statement declares: “We want to battle boredom,” and amen to that. The brand's collaborat­ion with KMSKA, Antwerp's Royal Museum of Fine Arts, is sublime, not least the items based on Fouquet's Madonna Surrounded by Seraphim and Cherubim of c.1450 (from £25). Naturally, I snapped up the crossbody 'phone bag (£85). Why I failed to acquire the correspond­ing kimono (£205, below) remains a mystery. It is sold out online, but I may yet return to the city to invest.

Meanwhile, the Antwerp Six are very much in vogue, along with shoulders, structure, suiting (which, characteri­stically perversely, they did in the Nineties rather than the Eighties); basically, all the things that were declared dead and buried thanks to Covid. At the same time, violent colour has never been more explosivel­y modish.

And, yet, what did I discover in Antwerp itself? Universal adoption of the same drab leisure drag that pockmarks the rest of the Western world, aka The Quotidian. And it was this that threatened to destroy me.

Worse, a tour of the city's aggressive­ly didactic vintage scene (“Enjoy your responsibi­lity”) revealed not merely The Quotidian, but The Beyond Fucking Ghastly. I have revelled in pre-loved purchases from the moment I was put in charge of my costuming.

In the Eighties, this meant plush Fifties frockage and wasp-waisted Forties jackets; in the Nineties, sinuous Thirties slip dresses teamed with Twenties cocktail capes. Only now vintage equals the Noughties, meaning it is fast-fashion that is being rehashed. All hail, the polyester supremacy.

The results go beyond Normcore to become Turdcore. I was reminded of

the incident in Douglas Coupland's J-Pod where the hero inadverten­tly trades wardrobes with a group of illegal immigrants being people-smuggled.

His “cheeseclot­h-thin knit shirts too flimsy to buff a car with” are interprete­d as a breaking trend and embraced by his hipster colleagues.

The shop-by-weight Melting Pot Kilo even sits next to the Dries flagship, as if to swallow up its baroque beauty in the banal. The Quotidian, man, it's coming for you. The solution: get thee to Essentiel Antwerp, if not to 'twerp itself, and festoon yourself in cherubim and seraphim. ●

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 ?? ?? Dries Van Noten’s 2017 Womenswear show with floral ice sculptures by Japanese artist Azuma Makoto
Dries Van Noten’s 2017 Womenswear show with floral ice sculptures by Japanese artist Azuma Makoto
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