Last summer I started to map the city of Antwerp in threads, tracing its sartorial history among streets and monuments, from the béguinage where nuns stitched millstone ruffs to the department stores outfitting passengers for the Red Star Line steamer ships, from the alchemy of the early dye workshops to the ateliers of the contemporary avant-garde. This ancient port city was at one time the richest in northern Europe; much of its wealth derived from dyeing, finishing and trading cloth. Thanks largely to the influence of the Fashion Department of its Academy of Fine Arts, 500 years on the Antwerp of today is distinguished by an extraordinary concentration of fashion professionals, including Dries Van Noten and Ek Thongprasert.
This year the Fashion Department celebrates its 50th anniversary, and earlier this month the graduation show saw the reunion of the Antwerp Six (who themselves graduated in the early 1980s) to form the jury for the fourth-year students presentations. The city is being dressed in appropriately fashionable anniversary decorations, and events culminate in an exhibition opening in September at the Mode Museum (MoMu).
Antwerp is rich in tiny museums and specialist archives, making my historical research (which was used in an app of fashion walks) a joy, but I was also enchanted by the integration of fashion in this city. The back streets conceal unassuming but magical enterprises. A former solar-panel shop near to the Central Station is home to Atelier Solar Shop, a welcoming local store run by menswear designer Jan-Jan Van Essche and photographer Piëtro Celestina. It stocks remarkable stuff, from Van Essche's garments to small jewellery collections and shoes to flea-market finds and patinated oddments from around the world.
Solar Shop also hosts events staged by Otark, a food collective linked to the fashion scene. Started four years ago by Hadas Cna'ani and Charlotte Koopman, Otark's philosophy of food is rooted in communality, sharing and conversation, with flavours plucked both from the back garden and specialist shops. Regular events include Otarkino, a cinema meal that recently paid a leathery culinary tribute to Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe. On Sundays their pop-up breakfast club at In de Roscam on the Vrijdagmarkt is a reviving adventure, with Georgian bread from a local monastery served alongside treats, such as homemade waffles, ice cream and grilled cheese with kimchi.
Tucked behind the Fashion Department and MoMu, and flanked on one side by the Plantin-Moretus Museum, the Vrijdagmarkt has been a secondhand market for almost 500 years – clothing was a key part of a household's wealth, and there was once a thriving industry of tailors who specialised in adjustments or in "turning" garments to expose their less-worn panels of fabric. The market still runs on Fridays, but for a more upmarket fix, Vrijdagmarkt 6 is a permanent consignment store specialising in directional menswear, including pieces from Antwerp designers Raf Simons, Dries Van Noten, Kris Van Assche (Dior Homme) and Ann Demeulemeester, with otherworldly window displays provided by fashion students.
In the Coccodrillo shoe shop stock is casually arranged on the floor and staircase, but this high-fashion institution has provided MoMu with some of its most covetable objects. Owner Geert Bruloot buys exceptional pieces to dress the windows before adding them to his collection. Above Coccodrillo, in a suite of wood-panelled 19th-century reception rooms, Dirk van Saene displays his clothes on racks by Maarten Baas that have the cartoonish wobble of giant doll's furniture made of Fimo. This is also the place to find Walter Van Beirendonck and Veronique Branquinho.
Another first floor – this one cached at the back of a small courtyard and accessed by appointment – is home to the Antwerp headquarters of RA, staffed by young designers and photographers. RA is where you come to track down the uncompromising collections that make fashion insiders shudder pleasurably in their Simone Rocha brogues – Gareth Pugh, Meadham Kirchhoff, Lea Peckre – alongside work by emerging Antwerp talents and selected vintage.
Open studios are studded among the backstreets near the Marnixplaats. On Maarschalk Gerardstraat, Collectif d'Anvers hammers out bespoke footwear in a light-filled space strung with wooden lasts. The shop out front also sells draped, geometric womenswear by Sophie Claes. On Scheldestraat, Salon Van Hongo offers feminine clothes with a sophisticated cut; the "Van" in the title being a self-Flemishisation by Japanese-born designer Izumi Hongo. Maureen De Clercq on Emiel Banningstraat teaches at the Fashion Department (the studio is open on Fridays and Saturdays) and designs a range of elegant adjusted-to-measure women's clothes.
On warm evenings the eight-spoked circle of the Marnixplaats itself becomes the city's social hub – a magnet for style hunters. They can be found crowded into seafood joint Fiskebar before a nightcap at Café Vitrine.
