The Antwerp Six

The Antwerp Six are a group of six Belgian fashion designers who trained at the fashion department of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp and graduated in the early 1980s. They were never a label, a fashion house, or a collective with a shared manifesto. The name was applied from outside. What connected them was a school, a generation, and a single moment.

The six are Ann Demeulemeester, Dries Van Noten, Walter Van Beirendonck, Dirk Bikkembergs, Dirk Van Saene, and Marina Yee.

London, 1986

The breakthrough came in 1986. Together with the Antwerp retailer Geert Bruloot, who organised the trip, the designers rented a van and drove to London to show their collections at the British Designer Show at Olympia, then part of London Fashion Week. Demeulemeester did not travel, as she was pregnant at the time.

The reality was less polished than the legend. Their stand was placed upstairs, away from the main floor, so they printed flyers and handed them out below to bring buyers up to the work. It worked. Within days, stores including Barneys, Bergdorf Goodman, and Liberty placed orders. The international press and buyers struggled with the Flemish names and began calling the group the Antwerp Six. The name stayed.

What they shared

They came through the same program, taught in that era by Mary Prijot, with a curriculum built on drawing and concept rather than commercial training. Their work read as a reaction against the maximalism and power dressing that defined 1980s fashion. In its place came an intellectual, craft-led approach, shaped by punk, club culture, and the Japanese avant-garde of Rei Kawakubo and Yohji Yamamoto.

The common thread was not a single look. It was a way of working: independence, a personal design language, and the idea that a fashion school could be the start of an international career. That last point changed how the Royal Academy, and Antwerp itself, were seen.

How they differ

The six took very different paths, which is part of why the group label always sat awkwardly.

• Ann Demeulemeester built a dark, androgynous house around a near monochrome palette of black and white, fluid tailoring, and a romantic, undone line.
• Dries Van Noten became the most commercially recognised of the six, known for textiles, print, and layered colour rather than minimalism.
• Walter Van Beirendonck worked in bold colour and social commentary, ran the label W&LT, and designed costumes for U2's PopMart tour. He later led the fashion department at the Royal Academy until 2022.
• Dirk Bikkembergs focused on menswear and built his label around an athletic direction, later tied closely to sport and football.
• Dirk Van Saene kept his output small and sold selectively, and in later years moved toward sculpture and painting.
• Marina Yee was the most elusive of the six, working in a freeform way and moving early into upcycling and sustainability. She died in 2025.

A note on Margiela

Martin Margiela is often listed as one of the Antwerp Six. He was not. He graduated from the same academy just before the group and shared much of their deconstructive thinking, but he did not show in London with them. The mix-up is common and worth correcting.

Why it still matters

The Six were only the Six for around three years before their careers fully separated. Their influence is usually described less as a style and more as a mindset, one that carried through later Belgian designers and through Antwerp's standing as a fashion city. In 2026, MoMu in Antwerp opened the first major exhibition on the group, marking forty years since the London trip. It runs into early 2027.

At ninesells we carry archive pieces from two of the Six: Ann Demeulemeester and Dirk Bikkembergs. Different designers, the same starting point.