By Giulia Piceni. Cover image The Antwerp Six, 1985 ©Photo Patrick Robyn. Graphic design Victor Robyn.
The forthcoming exhibition at MoMu Museum in Antwerp marks a critical moment in fashion history and in the education of its next generation. Opening in March 2026 and running until January 2027, The Antwerp Six will trace the evolution of six designers who changed the trajectory of global fashion. At a time when students are taught to build their brands, maximise visibility and chase digital validation, the MoMu’s exhibition offers a very different kind of narrative. It looks back to a time when six young graduates, armed with nothing but their garments, conviction, and an old van, decided to risk everything to be seen.
In revisiting that moment, the museum invites reflection on what it means to be radical in fashion today. The Antwerp Six (Dries Van Noten, Ann Demeulemeester, Walter Van Beirendonck, Dirk Van Saene, Dirk Bikkembergs and Marina Yee) are not simply the heroes of Belgian fashion, but symbols of how independence, friendship, and refusal can generate cultural revolutions. Their legacy proves that the most radical ideas in fashion rarely emerge from institutional approval or corporate investment, but from the restlessness of young and talented individuals determined to create something new. For students who often feel pressured to conform to commercial demands or algorithmic trends, the Six’s story serves as a powerful counter-narrative, insisting that relevance is not achieved by visibility alone, but through integrity, experimentation, and the audacity to imagine otherwise.
The Birth of a Fashion Revolution: The Antwerp Six
In 1986, a group of young fashion designers from Antwerp’s Royal Academy of Fine Arts decided to take their work beyond Belgium’s borders. Having graduated between 1980 and 1981, they felt an urgent need to confront the international fashion scene directly. Together with Geert Bruloot, the owner of Antwerp’s cult shoe boutique Coccodrillo, they rented a van, packed their collections, and drove to London Fashion Week. At that time, London was the centre of fashion’s creative insurgency. Vivienne Westwood was rewriting the codes of punk and romanticism, Katharine Hamnett was making political T-shirts chic, and emerging labels like BodyMap and Culture Shock were pushing the limits of body and identity through design.
The Antwerp designers were given space on the top floor of the British Designer Show, an area typically reserved for bridalwear and rarely visited by the press or buyers. Realising that no one would come to them, they took matters into their own hands, covering the building with posters that led curious visitors upstairs. It worked — and history proves it. Buyers from Barneys stopped by, orders were placed, and the British press began to talk about the mysterious Belgian collective whose names they could barely pronounce. Thus, The Antwerp Six were born, not through marketing or institutional endorsement, but through their own initiative and the magnetism of their shared identity.
Each designer would go on to develop an independent voice. Dries Van Noten’s mastery of print and textile, Ann Demeulemeester’s wearable poetry, Walter Van Beirendonck’s surreal symbolism, Dirk Bikkembergs’s athletic sensuality, Dirk Van Saene’s ironic craftsmanship, and Marina Yee’s experimentalism collectively shaped the vocabulary of modern fashion. Yet what unified them was not aesthetic similarity, but an attitude of radical independence. They proved that a small city like Antwerp could become a centre of influence, not by imitating Paris or Milan, but by cultivating its own intellectual ecosystem.
Inside MoMu Antwerp’s Exhibition: Where Collaboration Meets Rebellion
MoMu’s exhibition will explore the formative years of the six fashion designers at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, their 1986 London debut, and the individual careers that followed. Through garments, sketches, photographs, and archival materials, it will reconstruct not only their creative evolution but also the cultural and social conditions that made such a phenomenon possible. By doing so, the museum invites viewers to consider how collaboration, education, and geography can produce new modes of fashion thinking. For students, this fashion exhibition offers an invaluable opportunity to study what happens when a local scene becomes global without losing its identity. Antwerp in the 1980s was not a fashion capital, but it had something more potent: a combination of academic rigor, artistic freedom, and youthful rebellion. The Six emerged from a pedagogical environment that prioritised conceptual thinking and technical perfection, and this educational model remains one of Antwerp’s greatest exports.
Why the Antwerp Six Still Matter — and What They Teach Fashion Today
The relevance of the Antwerp Six today extends far beyond nostalgia. In an era defined by economic instability, climate anxiety, and an ever-expanding vintage market, fashion students find themselves caught between two conflicting impulses: the desire to innovate and the pressure to survive. The Antwerp Six represent a path forward that does not sacrifice authenticity for success. They remind us that meaningful fashion often arises from limitation, and that collaboration can be an act of resistance against the hyper-individualism encouraged by the fashion industry.
The renewed fascination with archival fashion and with the aesthetics of the 1980s and 1990s is not coincidental. It reflects a generational longing for a time when creativity was tactile, slower, and perhaps more sincere. Many students and young designers today, alienated by the digitalization of the creative process, are rediscovering the value of craftsmanship, materiality, and collective identity. The story of the Antwerp Six embodies these values. It suggests that to create something lasting, one must first cultivate community and conviction.
Furthermore, the rise of contemporary designers trained at the same Royal Academy — such as Glenn Martens at Maison Margiela — has reactivated global interest in Antwerp’s intellectual approach to design. Martens’s work, known for its conceptual depth and structural innovation, demonstrates how the Academy’s legacy continues to shape contemporary aesthetics. His success also reinforces the idea that Antwerp is not merely a historical moment but an ongoing dialogue between past and present.
The upcoming MoMu exhibition thus invites fashion students to reconsider what progress means. Progress in fashion has long been equated with newness, but the Antwerp Six challenge that assumption. Their longevity, their refusal to conform, and their continued influence suggest that the true measure of progress lies in coherence and authenticity rather than speed or trend.
The Antwerp Six were defined by persistence and belief. In 1986, they had no idea whether their journey to London would lead anywhere — yet it did, and it changed everything. Their story is not simply a chapter of fashion history, but a living example of how courage, community, and imagination can transform limitation into legacy. For any student who has ever felt unseen, underfunded, or uncertain, the Antwerp Six stand as proof that even from the margins, one can alter the center. The van they drove to London was small, but its impact was vast. Forty years later, the road they took still leads forward.
