Who started it?
Ann Demeulemeester was born in Kortrijk, Belgium, in 1959. She loved fashion from the age of 16 and attended art school in Brugge before enrolling at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in 1978, where she met a group of budding fashion luminaries with the common goal of putting Belgium on the fashion map.
'We started from zero, so nobody was expecting anything from us,' she says. 'But we were all very ambitious and had a kind of chemistry. The only way to show the world that Belgium even had designers was to create something really good and different.'
Her time at design school was challenging, but rewarding. 'We all worked like crazy, but we all ventured into different directions. We fought a lot. If I loved punk, and another designer was into disco, that could cause a big fight.'
Rebelling against the traditional expectations of design, Demeulemeester was inspired by the emerging punk scene in London. She played around with the lines of classical form to create a new look that sought to incorporate individuality and insouciance into the draping and cut of clothing.
She graduated from design school in 1981, and the next year was awarded the Golden Spindle Award for most promising young fashion designer. She went on to freelance for various international ready-to-wear labels before launching her own label, BVBA 32, in 1985 with her soon-to-be husband, Patrick Robyn. The label was based on the idea that clothing should project the individual.