MoMu Highlights: The Antwerp Six

During this visit you will discover everything that MoMu has to offer! A MoMu guide will take you through the temporary exhibition The Antwerp Six and provide an insight into the collection presentation, which includes masterpieces by Martin Margiela, A.F.Vandevorst, Ann Demeulemeester, Raf Simons, … Afterwards you will pay a short visit to the expo on the ground floor.

In 2026, The Fashion Museum Antwerp (MoMu) will celebrate the 40^th anniversary of the international breakthrough of the Antwerp Six. This will be the first time that a major exhibition is devoted to these six iconic fashion designers. ​

The exhibition highlights the unique trajectory that connects these six exceptional designers. It began with their study at the fashion department at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp and resulted in six highly influential solo careers. In 1986, Dirk Bikkembergs, Ann Demeulemeester, Walter Van Beirendonck, Dries Van Noten, Dirk Van Saene and Marina Yee put Antwerp on the fashion map when they each presented their own collections at the British Designer Show in London. This led to their international breakthrough and established the City of Antwerp as a capital of fashion. Their unique designs continue to influence international fashion today.

MoMu’s collection presentation looks back at four decades of Belgian fashion, complemented by a selection from the museum’s historical collection. The exhibition gives an overview of the most important protagonists of Belgian fashion, based on the themes that characterise the distinctive nature of the MoMu Collection.

This exhibition explores Palestinian embroidery - called tatreez in Arabic - and dress through the lenses of nature, splendour, power and change. Tatreez was a rural craft, embedded in women’s relationship to nature – from motifs inspired by Palestinian flora, to fabrics dyed with indigo grown in the Galilee. At the same time, the splendour of embroidery attested to women’s wealth and status. The wedding was a vital rite of passage, with sumptuous clothing a key element of celebrations. Golden thread, mother-of-pearl shoes, and elaborate headdresses offer a spectacular glimpse of local craftsmanship. Silver jewellery, along with certain tatreez motifs, also held talismanic significance, reflecting the power of clothing to affect and protect the body.

Today, embroidery’s power lies in its connection to Palestinian identity, as a symbol of resistance and solidarity. Since the Nakba, or catastrophe, of 1948, which refers to the mass displacement and dispossession of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, and the establishment of the state of Israel, tatreez has become a form of cultural resistance, an assertion of identity. The exhibition traces the politicisation of the craft, and the continued inspiration it provides to Palestinian fashion designers in the present.