You know you’re in a city that takes its fashion seriously when even the Virgin Mary is dressed head to toe in couture. A short walk from Antwerp’s old town, with its ornate medieval guild houses and cobblestone streets, is the baroque church of St Andrews. Like many of the city’s Catholic churches, it has beautiful stained glass windows, an exuberantly carved wooden pulpit and more artworks by Flemish masters than you can shake an incense stick at. But we’re here to pay homage to an art form of a different kind.
In a quiet chapel, an elegant 16th-century wooden statue of the Madonna is clothed not in her usual blue cloak, but a dress of pale gauzy fabric, trimmed with a collar of white pigeon feathers, custom made by renowned Belgian fashion designer Ann Demeulemeester. It’s a bold statement but one that’s entirely in-keeping with a city where a love of fashion seems woven into the fabric of everyday life.
It wasn’t always so. In the 19th century this impoverished neighbourhood was known as the “parish of misery”– a reputation that endured well into the 1980s when a young designer named Dries van Noten took the plucky decision to open a shop on Nationalestraat, across the road from his grandfather’s tailor shop. Almost four decades on, the beautifully restored art nouveau building, with its curved windows, marble floor and chandeliers, is at the centre of Antwerp’s vibrant Fashion District (rebranded, presumably, because “Misery District” was a harder sell for the tourist board).
“You have to understand that there was nothing here at all before this shop opened. It changed everything,” says Yentl, a guide who is leading my daughter and I on a walk around some of the area’s key fashion sites and shopping streets.
Van Noten and Demeulemeester are both members of the “Antwerp Six” – a group of bright young graduates of the city’s Royal Academy of Fine Arts who exploded on to the international fashion scene in the late 1980s. Along with their peers, Walter van Beirendonck, Dirk Bikkembergs, Dirk van Saene and Marina Yee, they are credited with injecting new life into a fashion scene which had been dominated for decades by Paris, Milan and London.
Their story is being told in a major new exhibition at MoMu, Antwerp’s world-class fashion museum, just a few doors along from Van Noten’s flagship store. The retrospective, which runs to 17 January 2027, marks the 40th anniversary of the group’s first foray to London in 1986, when they piled into a rented van and caught a ferry from Ostend to show their debut collections at the British Designer Show in Olympia. The young Belgian designers won over the international fashion press and buyers alike with their talent, originality and chutzpah – creating their collections on a shoestring, often from upcycled materials, championing self-expression over marketability, hosting fashion shoots in abandoned car parks, and making their own flyers and posters.
Though it suited the foreign press to label them as the Antwerp Six (far easier than typing out all of those long Flemish names), they were never a collective and it’s gratifying to see that the exhibition has given each designer their own individually curated space. From the avant garde exuberance of Van Beirendonck’s colourful creations to the dark drama of Demeulemeester’s monochrome palette, the displays are as thought-provoking and imaginative as the clothes they showcase, combining film projections, recorded interviews, a moving conveyor belt of mannequins and an evocative soundtrack.
Emerging from the exhibition into the spring sunshine, it’s clear that the legacy of this pioneering group extended far beyond the catwalk and lives on in the city. On Nationalestraat contemporary designers rub shoulders with kilo stores where second-hand clothes are sold by weight. At Labels Inc you can browse pre-loved pieces from established Belgian designers such as Raf Simons and Martin Margiela or check out the featured collections from the city’s latest crop of fashion graduates. Nearby Kammenstraat and Steenhouwersvest are lined with vintage stores, streetwear brands and independent labels such as Arte Antwerp, which specialises in sleek, urban menswear inspired by graphic design, art and architecture. Even if you wouldn’t know a Bikkembergs bag from a Belgian waffle it’s impossible not to be inspired.
“The Antwerp Six taught people how to be entrepreneurs and to just follow their inner voice,” says designer Tim van Steenbergen, who did his apprenticeship with Dries van Noten, and then went onto found the social enterprise and sustainable fashion label ReAntwerp, along with journalist Ruth Goossens, three years ago. “They showed that if you want to do things differently, you can.”
Dismayed by the vast amount of textile waste created by the fashion industry, they set up the enterprise to provide training, employment and support to refugees from around the world. The clothes are made from deadstock material from local designers such as Van Noten and Christian Wijnants, to create a range of limited-edition classics, from shirts to trench coats, in its on-site atelier. “I wanted the clothes to have as much meaning and value for the people who make them as the people who buy them,” says Van Steenbergen. “We have worked with refugees from Afghanistan, Syria, Pakistan, Palestine, Brazil and Costa Rica. Our common language is textiles.”
It’s a fitting motto for a city whose wealth was built, in part, on the textile trade. In the 16th-century Antwerp was Europe’s largest river port, with cargos of English wool and Italian silks, as well as diamonds from India, spices from Portugal and sugar from the West Indies, being shipped up and down the River Scheldt. Riches from this trade were poured into the elaborate guild houses and civic buildings which surround the Grote Markt, the city’s showpiece square. The story of Antwerp’s port is told at the MAS museum, housed in a strikingly modern 10-storey building in the dockside Eilandje district. Don’t miss the panoramic views across the river and sprawling dockyards from the roof terrace, or the chance to snack on street foods from around the world at the Wolf Sharing Food Market, in an old warehouse with a waterside terrace.
Not only was golden age Antwerp a great commercial hub, it was also an artistic and intellectual powerhouse, home to painters such as Anthony van Dyck, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Clara Peeters and Peter Paul Rubens. You can see a collection of their works at the Royal Museum of Fine Arts but nothing compares to the impact of seeing four of Rubens’ huge altarpieces, in situ, at the imposing Cathedral of Our Lady.
The artist’s house and studio are now closed for major renovation work but, after a long day’s sightseeing and shopping, it was a relief to sit quietly among the displays of tulips and spring flowers in the Italian-style formal gardens which are still open to the public. We also stumbled upon some extraordinary family portraits by Rubens at the Plantin-Moretus Museum, the former home and workplace for nine generations of a family who completely revolutionised printing. The first atlas, countless scientific books and beautifully illustrated Bibles passed through the wooden printing presses here, some of which date back to the 1600s. With its dark panelled walls, leaded windows and creaking floorboards, it’s an atmospheric and fascinating place, where time seems to have stood still.
There’s just time for one last bolleke beer and a shrimp croquette in the sun-trap square next to our hotel, the charming Hotel t’Sandt, before we have to check out and hop on the tram to Antwerp’s central station for the 45 minute train ride to Brussels, where we’ll catch our Eurostar train home. The hotel, which is in a beautifully restored 17th-century mansion with polished wooden floors, a spiral staircase and beamed ceilings, has lived through many previous incarnations: banana warehouse, custom house, soap factory and sculptor’s studio. Today it makes a perfect base for exploring the city; friendly, stylish and wears its history well … much like Antwerp itself.
The trip was provided by Visit Antwerp. Double rooms at the Hotel ’t Sandt start from €217 a night