The Antwerp Six Were Never Really a Collective

In their Flemish hometown, the Antwerp Six are so famous, their images appear on postcards sold in antique stores alongside aerial shots of the UNESCO-listed Cathedral of Our Lady. Outside of the region, the renowned group of Belgian designers comprised of Dirk Bikkembergs, Ann Demeulemeester, Walter Van Beirendonck, Dries Van Noten, Dirk Van Saene, and the late Marina Yee are known for shaping the fashion industry’s relationship with Belgium. A new retrospective at MoMu, the Fashion Museum Antwerp, The Antwerp Six, explores their stories—and their legacy.

Opening March 28, the show arrives 40 years after the group received its myth-making moniker. It’s the first major exhibition to consider the intersection, enduring resonance, and individual trajectories of these unique designers: graduates of the fashion course at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp who, together with Martin Margiela (a classmate of Van Beirendonck and a year above the rest), managed to disrupt the Paris and Milan fashion scenes with their own sartorial radicalism.

“From the outset, it was important not to present the Antwerp Six as a unified movement or style, but as six radically individual practices that intersected at a particular moment in time,” explains Geert Bruloot, who curated the exhibition together with MoMu’s director Kaat Debo and curator Romy Cockx. “The key story was not one of collective identity, but of difference.”

Bruloot was introduced to Van Saene in 1983, when his footwear store, Coccodrillo—famed for stocking Margiela’s Tabi silhouette before any other shop—was located in the same mall as the designer’s other boutique, Beauties & Heroes. By 1985, Bruloot was accompanying the six on a visit to Japan. The following year, they packed up their collections in a van and headed to London for the Fashion Designer Show, where they would end up on the tepid second floor of the city’s Olympia center. The crew quickly devised a flyer campaign that advertised “Six Designers From Antwerp,” and by the trip’s end, Barneys New York was placing orders and the name was coined.

At MoMu, a series of floor-to-ceiling portraits shot by Patrick Robyn in 1983 announce the new show on the museum’s upper level. Inside are roughly 100 looks, while the designers’ impact is further underscored by rare ephemera like drawings, invitations, photographs, and personal documents.

“They opened their archives, selected key pieces, and provided context,” Debo says. “Our focus was not on presenting ‘greatest hits’, but on processes, beginnings, and moments of transition. We were particularly interested in materials that could reveal how ideas developed over time and how different aspects of the designers’ practices were interconnected.”

While the iconic name and their shared experiences means the designers are routinely referenced together, the reality is somewhat different. Until May 2024—when they gathered in the museum’s auditorium to discuss this show—the last time they’d been together was a decade prior, for the 50th anniversary of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts’ fashion department.

Honoring their singularities and contrasting aesthetic perspectives was paramount, says Bruloot, and the museum’s main gallery has subsequently been staged so each designer gets a “clearly defined space with its own logic, rhythm, and aesthetic language. The Antwerp Six were never a collective, so it was important that the exhibition does not impose that structure.”

At its core, The Antwerp Six is about what the group’s accomplishments meant for the city as a fashion destination; it also surveys the ways institutions can help develop talent. But it is, above all, a retrospective of six varied careers. “What continues to resonate is not a recognizable style, but a mind-set,” Debo says. “Creative autonomy, intellectual ambition, and the courage to operate independently. Their legacy is proof that it was possible to invent your own rules and succeed internationally.”

The Antwerp Six runs at MoMu Antwerp from March 28, 2026 through January 17, 2027.