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In fashion terms Belgium is small but mighty. Despite having a population less than many global cities, it has given the world Raf Simons, Dries Van Noten and the empire of Maison Margiela.
And now, the country’s status as a design force on the international fashion scene has been cemented by the reopening of the ModeMuseum (MoMu) on September 4 — after a three-year, €8m renovation that has added an auditorium and 800 square metres more gallery space.
It’s not just offering somewhere to view dresses, but a fresh perspective on how an exhibition should contribute to the global style conversation. “Over the past 15 years we have seen a worldwide boom of fashion exhibitions,” says Kaat Debo, who has been director of MoMu since 2008. “Museums should go beyond spectacle and make a difference in their curation. We decide which stories we bring and which stories we don’t bring. That’s a huge responsibility. The Black Lives Matter movement has made museums more aware of their blind spots. Too many stories remain untold.”
One of MoMu’s new exhibitions is assembled from its own archive and includes fine 18th-century costumes in Indian chintz. Debo explains that “as a curator you can decide to focus on the craftsmanship and beauty of these objects or you can decide to reveal the darker histories of these costumes as well, as chintz fabrics were also used as an alternative currency within West African slave trade.”
Two other shows have been curated for the reopening: “E/MOTION. Fashion in Transition” looks at how fashion expresses feelings including fear and desire, covering topics as diverse as representations of the female body and 9/11, and the work of Helmut Lang, Alexander McQueen and Hussein Chalayan. The third show, “P.lace.S. Looking through Antwerp Lace”, examines the historical links between the city and the production of the ornate textile.
The new MoMu wants to foster a peripatetic aspect and the lace show is being held in four other locations around the city connected to the lace trade. A programme of events will also bring the museum to the street. “We have developed giant colourful balls for five different locations around the city,” explains Debo. “Anyone can sit in them, creating the illusion of being dressed in a giant skirt. We collaborated with Walter Van Beirendonck, head of the fashion department at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp, and 10 students have created costumes for the balls.” The Royal Academy’s fashion department, which opened in 1963, was originally located directly above MoMu. The faculty building is now 10 minutes away, but the two remain intrinsically linked.
As well as being the country’s most influential fashion academic, Van Beirendonck remains one of its most celebrated designers. He was one of the Antwerp Six in the 1980s. “Antwerp is a tiny city, with a big heart for fashion,” says Van Beirendonck. “It started beating when ‘the Six’ graduated.” The designers, which included Dries Van Noten, Ann Demeulemeester, Dirk Van Saene, Dirk Bikkembergs and Marina Yee, all left the Royal Academy at the start of the 1980s, and in 1986 staged presentations in London that captured international attention. Their aesthetic was the antithesis of the decade’s power dressing. It was deconstructed and degendered, artisanal, anti-fashion and avant-garde, proposing a new way to wear clothes.
“I think it was a surprise that so much fashion could come from a small city like Antwerp,” says Van Noten. “In the 1980s people thought fashion had to come from Paris or from Milan. There was something rebellious about us.”
Many of the exhibitions held at MoMu since it was established in 2002 have been hugely influential. “I went to see every exhibition while I was a student,” says accessories designer and Royal Academy alumni Stephanie D’Heygere. “I kept going after.”
As a highly valued local tourist attraction, it enjoys funding from the city of Antwerp, and doesn’t rely on, say, the 1.5m-plus visitors that the Metropolitan Museum of Art clocks up for its annual Costume Institute exhibition. It has an archive of more than 35,000 pieces, which is larger than the Kyoto Costume Institute’s.
Like the flagship Ann Demeulemeester and Dries Van Noten stores, MoMu is a place of cultural pilgrimage. Kaat Debo adds that with the new ‘E/MOTION’ exhibition, “we want to reflect on the way fashion is at the centre of contemporary life and how it is in constant dialogue with important changes and emotions in society.”
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