'Being yourself' and 'always keep learning' were the driving forces behind the Antwerp Six

Forty years after Dirk Bikkembergs, Ann Demeulemeester, Walter Van Beirendonck, Dries Van Noten, Dirk Van Saene and Marina Yee shook up the fashion world at the British Designer Show in London, the Modemuseum Antwerpen (MoMu) is dedicating its first full exhibition to their legacy. The Antwerp Six showcases not only this chapter of rebellious Belgian fashion but also glimpses of their diverse personalities and the props of a blossoming friendship.

Two years ago, Geert Bruloot, the fashion entrepreneur who launched the Six as a group at the London trade fair in 1986, invited the designers to reflect on their work as friends. Based on these conversations and the research of MoMu curators Romy Cockx and Kaat Debo, each of the six was then allowed to help fill their own space in MoMu, in a presentation style that is unmistakably their own.

Mythical club

The Antwerp Six is not a brand, a fashion house, or an official trade association. The name sounds as mythical as it actually is, Bruloot states as he guides the fashion press into the first room. The six only worked closely together in London for three years. They were eventually banned for corrupting British fashion with their Belgian, avant-garde ideas at an illegal 'guerrilla' fashion show, forcing them to move on to that other fashion city, Paris (1988). After a joint collection, they each went their separate ways there. Nevertheless, the 'Six' label, coined by their British fashion agent Marysia Woronieczka and kept alive by the press, still sticks 40 years later.

In the entrance hall, you can learn many such nuances about the famous Antwerp fashion legend. You arrive and are immediately surrounded by the complete sensation of their history. Screens, photographs and video footage illustrate the major steps from their fashion education to their breakthrough. We see the young Six in the classroom alongside early sketches and their graduation collections. There are newspaper articles in which they discuss their rebellious visions for fashion, and reviews of the show spectacles, plus excerpts of them in short clips played on TV screens.

It is an overwhelming start to an exhibition. You get the impression that Cockx and Debo locked themselves in the archive and did not really want to choose. On the other hand, the arrival of the Six was just that explosive.

Among the papers, you also understand the era in which the Six grew up. They are children of the sixties and seventies, a time of change sealed by outspoken youth. They took part in labour protests (May 1968) and propagated sexual freedom, making loud music and art like pop and performance art. Fashion was important to their message. London became the centre for it, with the punk fashion of Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood as its peak.

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Rebelling at the academy

Against this rebellious backdrop, a rather traditional fashion department was founded at the Antwerp Academy in 1963, focusing on pattern drawing and later on making theatre costumes. The students were overseen by Mary Prijot, trained in painting, who would also become the teacher of the six. She preferred her students to make neat clothes inspired by French haute couture, something à la Coco Chanel, not for hippies but for a respectable clientele. Our six fashion students, who became classmates after enrolling in 1976 and 1977, wanted none of that. They wanted to create new things, just like the artists of their time.

MoMu has beautifully depicted how they became attached to each other both professionally and personally. The six increasingly spent time together. They went out together and, through Van Noten's father who owned a menswear shop, forged invitations to get into fashion shows; these fakes are also on display behind glass in the museum.

Breakthrough

To fully understand the story, you need to spend a good portion of your museum time in that first room. There you will also learn about the formative years of the Six before their own labels, when they designed for Belgian brands like Bassetti and Jacques Laloux, and then about their breakthrough as a mythical collective. An important role in this was played by a competition to promote Belgian fabric manufacturers: The Golden Spool. The trophy, a spool, is also on display. When the Six kept winning it, they were disqualified. So they put on their own show (1985) in a warehouse on Antwerp's Scheldekaai, which unexpectedly attracted 3,000 paying visitors. Bruloot came into the picture and the rest is history.

At the exhibition's opening, Debo describes the arrival of the Six as a pivotal moment for the fashion world, but also for the city of Antwerp, which was already a textile city but without a clear fashion identity. Bikkembergs, Demeulemeester, Van Beirendonck, Van Noten, Van Saene and Yee made a difference in that, both together and individually. So much so that their success led to a flood of tourists. On the wall hang the advertisements: Antwerp appears as a shopping destination in Elle, i-D and on WWD. After half an hour in MoMu, you understand what the Six did for the city without even seeing the clothes.

Own mark

From that perspective - the Six as the foundation of the fashion city - they also had to have a say in their parts of the exhibition. We start with Dirk Bikkembergs, who deliberately waited a year to graduate solo to focus all attention on himself. The fashion image of the hyper-erotic, powerfully built sportsman originates from him. Raf Simons was inspired by it. MoMu's selection is shown on a large screen. Bikkembergs was also the one in the group who best understood the power of publicity, according to Bruloot. In the opening room, there was already a copy of his famous catalogues in which model Michel De Windt intimately embraces a pair of hiking boots.

We meet Walter Van Beirendonck in the flesh - or rather, his virtual clone, a talking face on a small screen hidden at the right height in an outfit of his own design. He is contemplating his career in dialogue with a robot from his own fantasy world, Puk Puk, surrounded by his 35 outfits that are just as 'poppy'. “They even call me the last punk,” says that Van Beirendonck.

Dirk Van Saene and Marina Yee were the most politically engaged, according to Bruloot, and logically worked on the border between fashion and art. “With Van Saene, there was always humour involved,” he says. In his designated space, five models circle on an automatic conveyor belt; he has given the audience funny faces, painted on boxes and bags. In the background, we see carefully chosen excerpts from five 'défilés', with free-spirited models in fur coats and checked blouses.

For Marina Yee, who passed away in 2025, a special tribute had to be created. The MoMu team photographically cleared out her studio, numbered everything, and rebuilt it. “She loved rubbish,” Bruloot knows. This is also evident from the copy of her workshop, full of trinkets and material tests.

Dries Van Noten is positioned among his virtuoso colleagues as the king of strong finales. For days, Bruloot worked with him to select the best images for the big screen - kill your darlings, his mentor adds. The scenography also shows how consistent his collections have been, with recurring rococo and chinoiserie prints, expensive fabrics, and strong craftsmanship.

The choice of Ann Demeulemeester to end the exhibition is deliberate; Bruloot knew it would result in something calm and strong. Her entire oeuvre, displayed on a glossy black floor, comes across as a single collection. With this, she immediately shows how much you can do with the colour black. Demeulemeester's pieces are so well-constructed that they could be worn season after season; retailers liked that. On the opposite wall hangs her favourite supermodel, 'Louise', framed in portrait form. Alongside her, the brand's style is explained: romantic, dark and androgynous.

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Opportunities for young talent

Bruloot regularly receives requests from young people to talk about the Six because there is a certain romance attached to them. “But you can't replicate it,” he impresses upon them. Nothing about the Antwerpers' success story was orchestrated; “a train stopped and they all jumped on.” They had no money - meetings with Bruloot took place in Van Noten's flat - but the drive to break through was enormous. Along the way, they learned what was needed about retail, building brands and the right presentation.

“They wrote a unique chapter in fashion history without a plan,” Bruloot states. According to him, the new generation of Belgian designers must now find that inspiration for themselves. With 40,000 graduates worldwide annually, not everyone will start their own fashion house, and that is not necessary. “It is especially necessary to support them in their search for an authentic identity.”

In that respect, the exhibition is more than a retrospective. MoMu wants to use the impact and legacy of the six as leverage for today's young talent. Hence the involvement of the Antwerp Academy, the city of Antwerp and Flanders Fashion in setting up affiliated programmes for the exhibition, such as ‘Waved Together’, a fashion show for young designers, and ‘Sew What’, a programme for children to learn to look critically at the principles of fashion consumption.

Pond full of pearls

"You have to invest in a wide pond of talent to be able to fish out the pearls," Debo explained her intention with the exhibition to the press. According to the curator, that trust in creation begins with seeing the smallest signals, such as a child making a remarkably good fashion sketch at the drawing table.

Were the Six a unique cohort or have we become more selective? That question hangs in the air for seven rooms. Is there a chance of a repeat of such a fusion of great talent? Learning and continuing to learn is certainly a prerequisite. That schooling is a recurring theme in the Antwerp Six. Even Marina Yee, who created a very limited body of work, always continued to study fashion. Until the last days before her death, she learned about fashion by continuing to look at old collections and drawing.

The Antwerp Six is an initiative of MoMu in collaboration with the city of Antwerp and with the support of EventFlanders, and runs until January 17, 2027.