Walter Van Beirendonck Marks 40 Years as Antwerp Fashion Festival Launches
Belgian fashion icon Walter Van Beirendonck, the last active member of the legendary “Antwerp Six,” celebrated his 40-year career on June 4, 2026, with a landmark anniversary show titled “40 Years of Dreaming the World Awake” at the Boerentoren in Antwerp. The show served as the centerpiece of the inaugural Antwerp.Fashion Festival, a four-day city-wide event running June 4-7 that positions Antwerp as an international fashion capital while showcasing local talent to both global professionals and the general public.
A Gift to the City
In a powerful symbolic gesture, Van Beirendonck skipped Paris Fashion Week men’s shows for the first time to present in his hometown, describing the show as “a gift to Antwerp and the Belgians.” The anniversary presentation brought together designs from across his four-decade career and concluded with his latest collection, held at the Boerentoren — Europe’s first skyscraper and an iconic Antwerp landmark.
According to VRT NWS, the designer saw the occasion as “the perfect opportunity to also celebrate 40 years of Walter Van Beirendonck in his own city.”
A City-Wide Fashion Takeover
The Antwerp.Fashion Festival features over 100 activities across the city, including 48 window displays, 18 installations, 12 shows, and 6 exhibitions. Approximately 28 brands are participating, including Christian Wijnants, Jan-Jan Van Essche, Brandon Wen, Façon Jacmin, Julie Kegels, Florentina Leitner, Tom Van der Borght, Bernadette, and Essentiel Antwerp.
Stefan Ceunen of Flanders District of Creativity, which organized the festival alongside the City of Antwerp and MoMu (Fashion Museum Antwerp), told WWD that the event aims to highlight the current and future generations of Belgian talent. “Yesterday about 50 foreign journalists and a group of buyers arrived in Antwerp,” Ceunen said. “We even had to refuse people because there weren’t enough places.”
Breaking Down Barriers
A key mission of the festival is to make fashion accessible to the broader public. Ceunen noted that “Belgian fashion still has too much of an image of being expensive, black, and inaccessible” — a perception the festival aims to counter. The majority of activities are free and open to the public, with no invitation required.
Mayor of Antwerp Els van Doesburg (N-VA) reflected on the city’s transformation, telling HLN that “Antwerp has always been a shopping city… but until forty years ago it was not a fashion city like Paris or Milan. The Antwerp Six changed that.”
The Antwerp Six Legacy
The festival coincides with the 40th anniversary of the Antwerp Six’s international breakthrough in 1986. MoMu is currently hosting the first major retrospective dedicated to the group, “The Antwerp Six,” running from March 28, 2026, through January 17, 2027. The exhibition has been extended due to popular demand.
The Antwerp Six — Van Beirendonck, Ann Demeulemeester, Dries Van Noten, Dirk Bikkembergs, Dirk Van Saene, and the late Marina Yee — graduated from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp in the early 1980s and took the fashion world by storm when they presented together at London Fashion Week in 1986.
Supporting Local Talent
The festival is part of a broader multi-year fashion plan by the City of Antwerp and Flanders District of Creativity to support emerging talent and create sustainable careers in the local fashion ecosystem. Many Belgian designers operate with limited budgets compared to luxury conglomerates like LVMH and Kering.
Charlotte De Geyter, co-founder of the Antwerp-based label Bernadette, which shows regularly at Paris Fashion Week, emphasized the value of the festival. “It gives enormous energy to know that all our colleagues can simultaneously show their work here to buyers and journalists,” she said. De Geyter, who returned to Antwerp after a stint in London, noted that she missed “the peace, the down-to-earthness, and the space to create.”
What’s Next
The concurrent timing of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp’s annual fashion show during the same weekend creates a pipeline from education to professional practice, with headhunters and recruiters already in the city. While it has not been officially confirmed whether the Antwerp.Fashion Festival will become a recurring event, Ceunen stated: “Supporting our local talent doesn’t stop after one edition, we want to keep the spotlight on them.”
As Van Beirendonck’s anniversary show lit up the Boerentoren and international press flooded the city, Antwerp sent a clear message: Belgian fashion is no longer a well-kept secret — it’s a capital in its own right.