At the last graduation show by Walter van Beirendonck as head of the fashion department at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Antwerp was packed. A hundred and fifty meters of double catwalks had been laid across the floor of the Waagnatie, an industrial warehouse on the Meir quay. Nearly twenty gigantic disco balls hung between the catwalks, spattering the concrete walls with spots of light.
Nearly half a century after first stepping foot on the threshold, the colorful designer bid farewell to the academy. He himself graduated in 1980, a year before Dirk van Saene, Dries van Noten, Ann Demeulemeester, Marina Yee and Dirk Bikkembergs. Under the name ‘The Antwerp Six’, this group turned the Belgian fashion world upside down and made their international breakthrough. In the meantime, Van Beirendonck got involved again at the academy: from 1985 he worked there as a lecturer, in 2007 he became head of the fashion department. He taught there two days a week.
He will retire this year. At the academy, but not as a designer. Because Van Beirendonck is still designing, and with verve. His men’s collections, two a year, are known for their bold shapes and graphic representations with intense colors. The atmosphere often falls somewhere between fairytale and monstrous, and can be as alienating as a lucid dream. Creativity at the highest level, making no concessions: these are aspects that Van Beirendonck also tries to convey to his students.
The end of an era
This was also evident at the show last Friday, where bachelor and master students presented their graduation collections. Van Beirendonck sat in the front row in a bright green jumpsuit, flanked by the other judges. The jury that evaluates the graduating students always consists of well-known personalities from the fashion industry. This year only alumni of the academy were invited, including Demna Gvasalia, Rushemy Botter and Bernhard Wilhelm. They all completed their studies at Van Beirendonck and owe their successful careers in part to him.
Van Beirendonck himself was sandwiched between designer and life partner Dirk van Saene and designer Minju Kim. Watch, judge, like it’s a show like any other. But this marked the end of an era in a way.
The graduation collections of the master students were, as is known from the academy, strongly conceptually oriented, with an idea, an image or a story as the basis. Igor Dieryck, for example, has developed a collection that deals with the dynamic between hotel staff and hotel guests. His creations contain uniform elements such as shirts and beige trousers, but also status symbols such as logo sweaters and glittering fabrics. A flat, round handbag attached to a glove was carried down the runway like a tray. Jejung Park’s collection is inspired by Andy Warhol’s style, photographic work and wider photographic technology. He combined spiral shapes derived from camera shutters and digital prints with silver-and-white wigs and Warhol-style sunglasses.
Heavy silhouettes and themes can be found in Taehyeok Gong, who takes the Japanese cyberpunk of the 1980s and 1990s and the fear of nuclear escalation prevailing at the time as a starting point. His work was darker, more menacing, and at the same time more poetic.
It will no doubt have been the occasion, but this year, more than ever before, parallels to Van Beirendonck’s work caught the eye of both the Master’s and Bachelor’s students. First of all, many collections were relatively eccentric, with broad shoulders and protruding peaks, prints and degradé, ruffles, pleats, rhinestones and multicolored faux fur. The quaint, dreamlike quality of Van Beirendonck’s work is also evident in the designs of Alise Dzirniece, who painted imaginative dinner scenes on lustrous fabrics, and Amir Torres, who combined decadent elegance with unfinished, frayed edges and motifs of ruined flowers.
On a more literal level, several students referred to the human skeleton in their collections, as Van Beirendonck did several times in graphics, and they made extensive use of facial ornaments and masks. In the case of Van Beirendonck, these have been a recurring feature for years.
whole worlds
At the same time, these aspects are not necessarily related to Van Beirendonck’s work as a designer. Above all, they are the result of a pedagogical vision geared towards uncompromising artistic creativity, according to which students do not learn to design clothes, but entire worlds. As head of the fashion department at the Academy, Van Beirendonck was sometimes criticized for this uncompromising approach: it was said that the young designers were artistically well developed after graduation but not always able to gain a foothold in the commercial reality of the fashion industry.
The question is whether the academy will continue on the path it has taken or take a different direction. It is not yet known who will succeed Van Beirendonck. While his predecessor Linda Loppa was able to appoint her successor herself, Van Beirendonck “is in no way involved in the choice of my successor,” he explained in an interview with the Belgian newspaper Knack last week. Yes, it’s good that the process is now more objective is, he said. “But I know the program inside and out. I know the strengths and weaknesses.”
But he will have to let go. In the meantime, he has “got used to the idea,” he told Knack. “I’m also looking forward to some more time for myself. It’s been quite a long time and a lot, and the last few years have been intense”. Van Beirendonck is referring to the Corona period, when digital education was the norm. All the more so it is nicer for him to end this last year with a physical show.
After his departure he wants to concentrate more on his own label, according to the designer. “Things are going very well.”
This translated post previously appeared on FashionUnited.nl.