Last summer I started to map the city of Antwerp in threads, tracing its sartorial history among streets and monuments, from the béguinage where nuns stitched millstone ruffs to the department stores outfitting passengers for the Red Star Line steamer ships, from the alchemy of the early dye workshops to the ateliers of the contemporary avant-garde. This ancient port city was at one time the richest in northern Europe; much of its wealth derived from dyeing, finishing and trading cloth. Thanks largely to the influence of the Fashion Department of its Academy of Fine Arts, 500 years on the Antwerp of today is distinguished by an extraordinary concentration of fashion professionals, including Dries Van Noten and Ek Thongprasert.
This year the Fashion Department celebrates its 50th anniversary, and earlier this month the graduation show saw the reunion of the Antwerp Six (who themselves graduated in the early 1980s) to form the jury for the fourth-year students presentations. The city is being dressed in appropriately fashionable anniversary decorations, and events culminate in an exhibition opening in September at the Mode Museum (MoMu).
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