“It Was Like A Train Came And Stopped At Our Station, And We All Set Off, Because This Was The Train Towards Adventure”: Geert Bruloot On Honouring 40 Years Of The Antwerp Six

As fashion celebrates four decades since the arrival of its most storied sextet, the man responsible for their initial coming-together has co-curated an exhibition charting their landmark rise.

Not long after Dirk Bikkembergs met Geert Bruloot, he outlined a simple, if slightly audacious goal. “‘Geert, listen – I want my face on the cover of Vogue,’” Bruloot recalls. The pair met when Bikkembergs, three years on from his graduation from Antwerp’s Royal Academy of Fine Arts, won the city’s Golden Spindle contest in 1985. Architected by the Belgian government to promote the country’s textiles industry, the competition was in its fourth year, and Bruloot, a local retailer and window dresser, had been asked by fellow participant Dries Van Noten to create its scenography. 

While Bikkembergs’ robust, utilitarian menswear had clinched the title in ’85, his cover star aspirations seemed out of step with the ecosystem in which he and his fellow auspicious Royal Academy graduates were operating.  Yes, Van Noten, Ann Demeulemeester, Walter Van Beirendonck, Dirk Van Saene, Marina Yee and Martin Margiela had passed through the institution’s corridors in and around Bikkembergs’ own tenure, but “We were all living in a fashion no-man’s land,” Bruloot explains. “There was no fashion in Belgium.” 

“And we were living in a time where communication was much more difficult,” Bruloot continues. However, there’s nothing like adverse circumstances to set the stage for resolve, and by 1986, Bruloot, frustrated with the lack of visibility of the local industry, rounded up the group of designers (minus Margiela who by this point was assisting Jean-Paul Gaultier in Paris) into a rented truck to show at London’s British Designer Show. The subsequent events gave way to one of the 20th century’s defining threads of fashion mythology. 

Sequestered from their London peers positioning on the tradeshow’s first floor – the main exhibition hall – the Six found themselves up a flight of stairs, nestled among the bridal sellers, and out of view of the buyers of department stores like Barney’s who had the power to jumpstart the careers of those to whom they took a shining. Spearheaded, as Bruloot tells Man About Town, by Yee (who passed away aged 67 in November 2025), the group set about making their presence known, distributing flyers to attract the eyes they craved. Barney’s were soon standing before them, alongside the media, and as their collections were lapped up, attention to mastering the pronunciation of the designers’ individual names was sidelined, and so the group tag, the Antwerp Six, was called upon for efficiency. 

It was only two years later that they were chucked out of the event, as Bruloot explains – “because we did a guerrilla fashion show” – leaving their time operating loosely as a unit comparable to a blockbuster pop group that travels through the music industry like a comet, upending it for a couple of years before disbanding to public uproar. However, their influence on Antwerp’s fashion standing was incalculable. And, thankfully, in this case, all of the solo careers were a hit. 

In anticipation of the 40th anniversary of their first London outing, Bruloot assembled the group once more to commit the Six’s story, the mythology, and the divergent paths that followed into a definitive retrospective at MoMu Fashion Museum Antwerp. No mean feat – “All seven of us had stored the story of 40 years in a different way,” he explains. But his energy for shouting about their talent hasn’t waned since they commanded the Designer Show’s floors. “I’m a lucky one. I could be part of this story for 40 years, so I never see this as hard work,” he smiles. “It was like a train came and stopped at our station, and we all set off, because we knew this was the train towards adventure. We did not realise where we were going, we just knew that we wanted to be part of it.” 

Hi, Geert. We’re so excited for the exhibition. Forty years is such a big mountain of history to document – what was the starting point? 

Well, it [started] a few years [ago]. Walter, Dries and others asked me to make a new book on the Antwerp Six, to follow up the [2007] 6 + book. But I didn’t feel like that, because I didn’t want it to be about me, I wanted it to be about them, and I thought that the book was a bit too static. Then [MoMu Director and Chief Curator] Kaat [Debo] asked me to make an exhibition. And my first and only condition was that all six of them would agree and would participate. So they did, immediately. We’ve known each other for so long, and we remain close friends, so they gave me the confidence. 

So we all came together, first of all for Kaat to propose the project, and then the first thing we did was try to find the common sense in all our ideas. This took a while. And secondly, another big research [component] was going into their archives, because the archives of the museum I knew almost by heart, but [not] their archives. When we started 40 years ago, we weren’t all walking around with cameras. So there was very little visual evidence of what happened. We had to scratch very deep and far to reconstruct the whole history with visual items. And another thing is that the story of the Six is an incredible story because the group of six designers, first of all, never intended to be a group. It was the situation that created this name and this fame. And it only lasted for three years until the moment that we were thrown out of London. Then they started to go on their own, little by little. Dirk Bikkembergs wanted to show during the menswear designers. Dries Van Noten wanted more space to make a showroom. But the myth of the Antwerp Six kept living on its own. Not one of us ever fed it. Most of the designers even wanted to get rid of the connotation, because they wanted to build their own collection and not be part of a group. So visualising a myth into an exhibition, that was the most difficult part. 

Speaking of the desire to, at times, shed the group label among the individual designers, was there any reluctance from any of them to be involved in the exhibition? Or because it’s an anniversary, did they feel like it had to be documented?  

The first reaction was a bit of a question mark, because they did not know, as I did not know back then, how we would do it. There is a lot to tell in a relatively small [exhibition] space. And then also there was [the challenge] of trying to visualise it all. But during these past two years, they all became more and more enthusiastic about it and started to realise that it was an important moment, for once and for all, to archive the story. We archived, quite amateurly, in [2002] when the museum opened. A lot of people gave their archives, and that was it. That’s why we decided very early on to use the exhibition catalogue as a catalogue raisonné which would tell the whole story and be a tool for later studies, if students want to study the story of the Antwerp Six. They could find all the details in there, because we could make it as thick as we wanted. 

And then crystallising this story into an exhibition, I have tried to count on the fantasy of the public. We will give the hints, and we will try to tell the story in a more abstract way, but in a very understandable [way] if you use your fantasy and if you can go back in time. Because it was a totally different time. The context in which it all happened was totally incomparable with what is going on today. So this we also try to show in the exhibition. I’m a big fan of Twin Peaks or Blue Velvet, because these are stories told in an abstract way, and the public was free to make their own interpretations. Fashion is a form of art, especially the kind of fashion that they made. They were working on creativity, on fantasy, all of them, in different ways. They were not working on products; that was the least of their ideas. This will maybe be difficult for some of the public – to go back from a product world into a fantasy or creative world. A world where they worked with a lot of emotion. But I think that for the new generation, it could be very inspiring what the Six have done and the way we will show it. 

Another challenge must have been encapsulating their collective legacy, but also the way their stories diverge so much, too? 

Yeah. They’re completely different. I don’t have to explain to anyone how different Walter Van Beirendonck is from Ann Demeulemeester. But I know them so well that I know that there is a certain link. And we do not have to demystify it; you cannot explain it scientifically. But I try to explain it by what happened in those formative years before – when they were at school, when they were clubbing together, when they were participating in the contest and so on. And I think in the opening part of the story, [visitors] will understand all of this. 

Marina passed away at the end of last year, which, of course, adds an extra poignancy to the exhibition. I’m guessing from what you were saying about the designers’ involvement that she managed to see the project almost to completion? 

Yes, totally. I have always remained close to her. And first of all, when all six of us were together talking about the exhibition, she was extremely enthusiastic. And that was her personality. When we were in London on the wrong floor [of the British Designer Show] in [1986], in the midst of the wedding gowns, it was her who attacked it and who, in a creative way, started to promote ourselves. And two years ago, I arrived at her place where she lived and worked, and immediately I had the idea of how to present her [story], and she said, ‘Yes, that’s what we’re going to do.’ And we worked on that during these past two years until two days before she died. And she remained very lucid until the two days before she died. She even made a new collection two weeks before on paper. So she was there until the very final days, and we were talking very intensively. And my last words with her, I took her hand, and she took my hand, and she said, ‘Geert, you do what we have talked about,’ and I said, ‘Yes, I promise.’ And it will be like that. 

It adds a whole other layer of meaning. 

Yeah. She has always been a big inspiration for all of us. And she was fashion. You cannot see her as a fashion designer – she was fashion. The way she was living, the way she dressed, the way she was thinking. So all of this, I hope, I will be able to show in the exhibition. And that’s why the least difficult part of the exhibition was creating Marina’s participation. 

You were, of course, there back in the day, throughout the whole story of the Six. A lot of curators of exhibitions don’t have that level of insight. Going back to your own experiences with the group, when did you start to realise that history was coming together around you? 

Well, there was a moment when Dries came to ask me to create a scenography and a styling for the fashion show of the third Golden Spindle Contest. The Golden Spindle Contests were contests organised by the ITCB (Institute of Textile and Clothing of Belgium) – a government organisation. And the ten laureates had the task to make a collection exclusively with Belgian manufacturers and Belgian fabrics, but with no goal to commercialise. They were free to make whatever they wanted from head to toe. And they had a lot of press with it also. So when I was working on this third Spindle Contest, and I met them all more privately, I realised, first of all, their talent. And they were very different. And also their engagement to it. All six of them had this will to make it. So these things together – the talent and the goal they had set themselves made me realise that this was gold.

And the other thing was that they were not hiding from each other what they were doing. We were still coming together, having dinners, sometimes clubbing together, sometimes doing little trips together. And on top of that were a whole group of people who were participating through this adventure. Inge Grognard, the make-up artist. Patrick Robyn, the husband of Ann Demeulemeester, who did fabulous photography for them all. Models – there were plenty of models. 

Obviously, there was the government scheme that was the catalyst materially, but how much do you credit their success to that, and how much do you think it was just about an inexplicable synergy that existed between them that made success, in some way, inevitable for the group? 

Well, it was first of all a big coincidence that you had seven talents together in two consecutive years in the fashion academy in Antwerp, which was back then very artistic. When I talked to them about it, they said, ‘Well, very fast we discovered each other, and we knew that we had a different view on [things].’ So they started to stick together. But on the other hand, each of them brought something new into the group. Walter and Dirk were very interested in the art world and in punk music. Dries was working in the industry because he had to make money to pay for his studies, so he brought this professionalism. And then Ann and Patrick [Robyn] were very keen on the way they presented their drawings, and so it stimulated the others to do even better. They all wanted to grow together.

But then, coincidentally again, there was the ITCB that was meant to exist only for five years but lasted eight years. And they gave them the opportunity to have contact with manufacturers. They started doing styling for the magazine of the ITCB (Fashion Business Belgium). They worked for the Golden Spindle contest. So this was another coincidence, where they learned they could push the button fast forward for a while. 

And then another thing was that with the Golden Spindle contest, they were invited to be part of a trade mission for the government in Japan. So they were invited to show these collections in Japan, and the most important thing was that there we discovered the stores of Comme des Garçons, and we realised that fashion was much more than only clothes. So that was another coincidence that pushed them forward. Also, I had the idea to go to London, but if I [hadn’t], they would have all made a career, I’m sure. But it would never have been under the shape of the Antwerp Six – for good or for bad, we don’t know.

So it was full of coincidences, at the right [time] and the right place. Of course, it was not all given to them on a golden plate. They picked it up, and they discovered, and they realised that their chance was there. 

Their legacy has obviously impacted the international scene, but on a local level in Antwerp, how did that transformation unravel? 

Well, first of all, they put Antwerp and Belgium on the fashion map. Suddenly, there was fashion in Belgium. And not one [designer] but seven. So that was the first thing. But out of that grew an international attention towards the fashion academy in Antwerp, and after the success of the Six, Linda Loppa became director of the fashion department, and she built it up on a very international level because there was this attention towards it. That was one thing. And then another phenomenon that happened was the success of the Six was so massive here in Belgium, that the next generation of young fashion designers coming out of the academy didn’t dare to start. It was too massive [to follow], and the ITCB did not exist anymore. And the first one who proved that it was possible was Raf Simons, when he started in Milan and had an immediate impact as well. Immediately, a whole generation followed with Veronique Branquinho, Bernhard Willhelm, Jurgi Persoons and so on. So the impact of the Six was massive, and until today, even with a very good fashion school and with incredible designers coming out and being placed internationally in the big houses, there is an enormous respect for what the Six have done.

For the young fashion community in the city today, how do you think the Six’s impact is reflected in them in a 2020s context? 

Well, there’s a nostalgia, because for [the Six] it looked much easier, because there were much less players in the fashion world. And there was not the power of the big luxury groups and the big fast fashion groups. They existed, but they were not important back then. So you could remain independent, and you had the important multi-brand stores everywhere in the world. Our first customer was Barney’s, New York. So at that time, every designer’s dream was to sell there. So that meant that we were present in New York with collections, which meant that the American fashion press was writing about us because there was a selling point. Today, this is gone. You don’t have these important multi-brand stores anymore. Apart from Dover Street Market. Even the department stores’ policies have changed.

But, on the other hand, what was different from today was communication. We made thousands of press packs and sent them by post. Today, you have an idea, and you push a button, and it’s going around the world. 

When people leave the exhibition, what are you hoping they’ll be feeling? 

Well, there is a growing longing for authenticity again, not only in fashion, but everywhere. So I hope we can help open their eyes that authenticity is what we need for the future now, in politics – everywhere. And I hope that also we can inspire the youngest generation to try to remain themselves, and, okay, if you need a big group, there’s nothing wrong with that, of course. But even then, try to remain yourself. I think that is the message I would like to tell everyone who is visiting the exhibition and who is reading the story of the Antwerp Six. 

The Antwerp Six will run from 28 March 2026- 17 January 2027 at MoMu, Antwerp, momu.be