Fashion fans and experts have gathered for the annual fashion talks under the roof of the Botanic Sanctuary, a former monastery and now a five-star hotel in the heart of Antwerp. The hall with its peaked roof and wooden beams seems intimate, especially when it is so full. It is reminiscent of a secret church. That’s fitting, because Antwerp is also a kind of fashion band, as the birthplace of the Antwerp Six.
After them, many more talents came from Belgian fashion schools. Two of them are on stage today: Julian Klausner, creative director of Dries Van Noten, and Rushemy Botter with his partner and partner Lisi Herrebrugh. They speak openly about freedom, pressure and creativity in a large fashion house.
Just do it: Botter
Rushemy Botter and Lisi Herrebrugh, the Dutch design duo behind Botter, are always breaking new ground. After the rapid start with their own label in 2018, with which they immediately won major fashion awards, creative direction followed at Nina Ricci. They later took over management of G-Star’s Raw Research Pinnacle Line. What did the two of them learn from these quick jumps?
The couple were standing in Rushemy’s mother’s kitchen when the headhunter called. Nina Ricci was a different house: a more classic style and a larger company. Lisi: “Suddenly we had a huge team. In the first week we googled what each function meant. What does a communications director do? We didn’t want to show that we didn’t know. Now we can talk honestly about it. But we had no idea.”
Conscious-naïve decisions
Rushemy describes her acceptance of the role with Ricci as a consciously naive decision. There was no fear of tackling something big. It wasn’t about prestige either, he says: “More of a feeling of: We have one foot in the door. We’re playing in the Champions League. We’re going to Paris – that was a dream for us.”
Nina Ricci needed them both for her “cool factor”. In return, the Botter brand needed visibility and funding, which was made possible by the income from work in Paris. “All the money we made, we invested in Botter. The plan was that Botter would grow on its own. But the reality is: Botter is very creative, Covid got in the way, and we needed more to keep it alive and continue our dream.”
On the first day at Nina Ricci, an inflatable unicorn was waiting for the Botters – a symbol of the freedom that awaited them. The promise was carte blanche. That was quite a disappointment; There was a lot of pressure, says Lisi. “First you feel the pressure of the numbers. Then you have to be consistent in your vision. After a few years it was time to move on.”
Denim laymen
They arrived at G-Star as denim amateurs. Now they learn tirelessly, and it’s fun: from the nature of the fabric to the correct position of the fly. This helps to shake up such a company from within, says Rushemy. “Denim fans know everything but rarely speak up – they are silent rules. We ask the questions and want to hear the answers that the company had taken for granted.”
Botter as a label has been quiet for a while, but a relaunch is imminent. “It’s going to be crazy,” says Rushemy. He’s not always so positive. There were also times when they wondered: Will we ever be inspired again? “Sometimes we both feel miserable, then we are very quiet. Then the person who feels a little less miserable has to get the other person out of it. But we fight through it together. And a fight it is. You fight for your beliefs, for your design, for the rent and for the survival of your company.”
Praise for Klausner
Big shoes to fill? Klausner fills it in effortlessly. The newly appointed creative director, who succeeded Dries Van Noten, is received like a superstar in Antwerp. Michelle Obama also wants him to keep it up, begins British Vogue presenter Chioma Nnadi. Instead of basking in his star status, Klausner calmly explains how he got to his position.
Klausner grew up in Brussels, studied at La Cambre and, via a detour, ended up in Dries Van Noten’s studio in Antwerp. That was six years before he was appointed creative director. He describes his promotion as a careful, professional process. It wasn’t just Dries’ personal preference, and he had to prove himself, especially to higher management.
“Moving into Dries’ office was a strange moment for me. It still felt like his office, it’s a very special place. It took a while until I felt comfortable in that space.”
Switch
From Dries he learns not to bury his head in the sand when something goes wrong, because it happens all the time. “Dries never wasted time in frustration or disappointment when things didn’t work out or turned out differently than expected. He reacted quickly, switched quickly and used setbacks to his advantage. You have to be able to recover quickly.”
When he is asked about the archive with high expectations, Klausner has to disappoint: It is an orderly system, you mainly see a lot of black clothes bags there. He describes what Dries has created in forty years as a balance between dream and reality. This is the trademark of the house and Klausner expressly sticks to it.
“There was always a lot of storytelling and a lot of imagination in the house, but we also have to fill wardrobes. The goal is to create a piece of clothing that serves someone and brings him or her joy or excitement. There is nothing more satisfying than when someone wears the pieces again and again and still looks at them with the same affection decades later.”
If he has to choose between being too daring or being too well-behaved and commercial, he chooses the former. “This is also the spirit of the house and the Antwerp designers: creativity must remain a priority.” It’s his ode to Dries.
Creative ping pong
He tells students and young designers: Dare to make mistakes and explain why something appeals to you. Dries called this creative ping-pong. “To play ping pong well, you have to be able to justify your decisions well.”
When asked what it means to be a Belgian designer, he says: “As a Belgian, you don’t take yourself too seriously from the start. There was hardly any fashion heritage in Antwerp, so the first wave of designers, the Antwerp Six, had to build everything up first. There was no weight of a particular heritage or anything to be compared to. That gives a certain creative freedom. The idea of luxury isn’t that present here either. It is more about quality and creative integrity – something that has meaning and is done with intention.”
FashionUnited traveled to Antwerp at the invitation of the Flanders District of Creativity.
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