Graduates at the world's best fashion school
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Last Friday saw Antwerp's Royal Academy Academy of Fine Art put on its graduate fashion shows. The fashion department at Antwerp is overseen by Walter Van Beirendonk, who taught Bernhard Willhelm and had Raf Simons intern for him. I mean, who wouldn't want a guy who somehow managed to create a style from blending rave, cyberspace avatars, and the sexuality of gay bears as their head of department? Surprisingly, a lot of the online coverage reported that "the students are making more wearable collections", in that context I often wonder if wearable actually means boring.
Really, this was a shoe war. Sure, it's cool when you're able to make crazy heel-less shoes, but when your model can't walk in them and everyone's just waiting for her or even him to fall, they're not really looking at your clothes anymore. When the shoes weren't some impossible shape, they were wedges with some weird add-on - knits, grass, sequins, and for some mysterious reason an awful lot of straw. I guess straw is the new wood for experimental academy students.
MINJU KIM
Minju Kim's Pokemon love dolls were really quite attractive. Coming to a pop video soon? I think so.
EDMUND OOL KEO SEONG
Just an example of some of the more experimental shoes. Although, does Nina Ricci Fall 09 sound familiar? Oh, and these are being modeled by boys, by the way.
UMIT ESBULAN
Umit Esbulan was really fun, even though some of the outfits featured the sad emoticon. The silver foil capes were crackling really loudly as the guys walked the runway.
NIELS PEERAER
Masters student Niels Peeraer won pretty much all the awards possible, including one from prestigious Belgian luxury leather brand Delvaux for Niels' Bento box handbag design. Apparently, five people happily paid nearly $4000 for each one. The rest of the collection looked a lot like last year's collection—Asian girly-boys in pretty pink and blue outfits. At first sight they looked like expensive, Chanel-inspired babygrows, but I guess the leather finishes made it a bit more… grown-up? The audience really loved the king-cum-queen guy at the end, though.
SO TAKAYAMA
So Takayama. Really? Cosplay in 2011? Being Japanese should be the opposite of an excuse.
MANON KUNDIG
Ah, yes! This is the stuff we like! Manon Kündig's AMAZING latex collection Blowjob—get it?—was honestly the most fun, refreshing, and at the same time amazingly executed and well thought through collection, by far. The collection is not, as some Belgian news sources spread, inspired by condoms—duh—but by rubber doll fetishism and the Belgian heavy metal festival Graspop.
Isn't this the cutest picture you've seen in a very long time? No, they're not unplugging each other's butts, they're deflating the garments, which also look surprisingly good without the air in them. Manon made most of the silhouettes with liquid latex and pushed studs and skulls into it by hand. Also gotta love the polyurethane skull shoes, the airbrushed leather, and the fact the models are wearing fake teeth.
Yes, this is amazing.
Traditionally, after the last show, the students, teachers, and models dress up in each other's collections and frantically jump around on the stage for such a long time that just watching them is really awkward but look how happy they are.
TEXT: NINA BYTTEBIER
PHOTOS: ATHOS BUREZ
Lee Hicken
June 23, 2011 03:15pm
Amazing. For sure the most interesting fashion school in the world. The UK should take note and as a result take more risks!
uchno.
June 29, 2011 12:09am
disappointed.
Elle Ashton
July 25, 2011 12:23pm
At least it's got some thought process and passion behind it rather than the "design for Arcadia or die" ideals forced down our throats at uni in England.