SHOW
From within the womb of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp, the Fashion Department has emerged as one of the most prestigious fashion programmes in the world.
Since the early 1980’s, the Antwerp Fashion Department has been known at an international level as a place for creativity, taste and ambition. Its unique vision has made it a place where young hopefuls and industry professionals alike flock to be inspired and motivated by the next generation of fashion creatives. The Fashion Department is proud to send off a new influx of talent into the world every year like the world-famous Antwerp 6, A.F. Vandevorst, Haider Ackermann, Kris Van Assche and the more recent alumni such as Demna Gvasalia (Balenciaga), Glenn Martens (Y-project & Diesel), Rushemy Botter, Virginia Burlina (LOEWE), Natalia Culebras (DIOR), Minju Kim, Shuting Qiu, Meryll Rogge, Sabrina Pfattner (Dries Van Noten), Florentina Leitner, Niels Peeraer, Giorgia Galfré (Louis Vuitton) and many others.
As from 2022, Brandon Wen has been appointed as the new creative director of the Antwerp Fashion Department. With his energy and creative vision, we will continue the enormous legacy of the department culminating in this years’ SHOW and EXPO.
Save the date: 6 + 7 June → SHOW+EXPO 2025 at Waagnatie, Rijnkaai 150, 2000 Antwerp
Ticket sales → end of May → www.showww.be
SHOW became WWWSHOWW (2020 & 2021)
During the unpredictable and turbulent year 2020, there was no exception. Regardless of the circumstances, the Fashion Department of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp succeeded in spotlighting the end-of-year collections of all its students in an innovative way.
Regardless of the state of the world, pandemic or not, all students at the Academy deserve the same opportunities and visibility as their predecessors, so that they can end their academic year as memorably as possible. The entire team of the Fashion Department wanted to explore new paths and got to work with their network of creative professionals to build a dynamic digital platform WWWSHOWW that became a true experience not only for the students but also for viewers from all over the world.
Fashion students showed their work on a virtual catwalk, which brought drawings, photos and videos to life by means of technical gadgets and different 'camera positions'. The nine graduating masters showed their collections not only in the digital environment. The public was given a hitherto unseen glimpse into the world of the young fashion masters: via the 'Blind Date video calls' they talked to fashion masters such as Raf Simons, Demna Gvasalia, Stephen Jones and Christian Lacroix about their collections and - as the icing on the cake - the Antwerp Handelsbeurs was transformed into the perfect setting for their inspiring 'grande finale'. This virtual fashion spectacle came about within the confines of the Antwerp Fashion Department. Conceived in a minimum of time and with a maximum of effort and creativity, the WWWSHOWW is an important experiment for the future.
The first WWWSHOWW was broadcast on Saturday 27 June 2020 and immediately reached 11.000 viewers from 80 different countries that same evening. In the meantime WWWSHOWW 2020 was streamed more than 50.000 times and the entire international press wrote about the innovative approach of the Antwerp fashion department. Watch HERE.
In the year 2021 Academy also chose to tell a new chapter of the WWWSHOWW story on Saturday 19 June 2021.
2020.showww.be + 2021.showww.be
