Description



The Antwerp Six is a group of influential avantgarde fashion designers that graduated from the Antwerp's Royal Academy of Fine Arts in the eighties. At the academy they were taught by Linda Loppa. The fashion collective presented a distinct radical vision for fashion during the 1980's that established Antwerp as a notable location for fashion design. The breakthrough occurred in 1988 as the group rented a truck and set out for the London fashion fair with their collections and have put this city on the fashionmap ever since. 

After that they all went their seperate ways and became famous individually with their own very distinct style and trademarks. Having done all of this they set an example for their continuators (such as Raf Simons, Veronique Branquinho, Kaat Tilley etc.) at the Flemish academies, and they set the - very solid - fundaments for the ferther growth of fashion in Antwerp.  

Since 2002 Antwerp has an actual, literal fashion centre: The ModeNatie (or fashion nation). In this exceptional building in the haert of the city, right next to van Noten's 'Fashion Paradise' their is a fashion school, a fashion museum and the Flanders Fashion Institute and recently also the biggest bootique of the Japanese designer Yohji Yamamoto.



Marina Yee

Marina Yee was born in 1958 in Antwerp, Belgium. After taking a course at the Institute of Fine Arts St-Lukas in Hasselt she started her 'fashion' education in 1978 at the Royal Academy in Antwerp. She gratuated in 1981 and when she went to London in 1986 with her collection she proved herself one of the notorious six.
Her professional carrier varies from leather collections for men and women (with Dirk Bikkembergs), to prize winning individual collections to theatrecostumes. In 2003 she started her own workshop in the centre of Antwerp. Her work reflects spirituality, respect and design. A very typical element that characterizes her collections is that she often commemorates and reconstructs old clothes (from fleemarkets and such) as an answer to fashion and her never ending consumer-attitude.