On 4 September, the MoMu Antwerp fashion museum reopens its doors to the public with the exhibition “E/MOTION. fashion transition“.
From next month, anyone strolling through the streets of Antwerp will be confronted with large billboards featuring design photographs of fashion designers such as Raf Simons, Glen Martens and others, as part of a project to celebrate the Belgian city-wide reopening of the famous museum.
The 800 square metre extension and renovation of MoMu Antwerp was recently completed by the Belgian firm B-architecten.
The collection of over 35,000 items includes the largest collection of Belgian avant-garde fashion in the world.
“We have been collecting Belgian fashion since the late 1990s, both from the first generation with the Antwerp Six and Martin Margiela, but also the younger generations with designers such as Glenn Martens, Demna Gvasalia or Rushemy Botter,” said Kaat Debo, the museum’s director and chief curator.
Speaking about the inaugural exhibition, Debo explained that “this show explores how fashion is an expression of emotion, fear and desire in society.” and underlined, as AnOther reports, that it will articulate the impact of designers on the events of the last three decades, “raising questions about how fashion can reinvent itself as an industry and the role that, in the future, designers can play in this.”
Meanwhile, in the ad campaign called Fashion/Conscious, South Korean-born, London-based photographer Hanna Moon photographed the “muses” that each of the designers involved – Walter Van Beirendonck, Raf Simons, Glenn Martens, Marine Serre, Rushemy Botter and Supriya Lele – chose.
For example, Supriya Lele chose hair stylist Cyndia Harvey, artist and writer Rhea Dillon and her friend Jasmine Gaziza Müller to “play the embodiment of inspiration and community”.
The campaign director, Isabella Burley, aimed to express things that we have missed since the pandemic, such as holding each other, kissing each other or attending parties.
The idea of flowers gradually melting on the models’ faces is Antwerp-based make-up artist Inge Grognard’s homage to nature as a friend we rediscovered during the pandemic (https://www.instagram.com/p/CRjSlH_jNwI/ ). “The flowers are also a reference to the idea of transition and transformation found in the opening exhibition,” the museum director said.
