Imagine a Scandinavian Alice in Wonderland with a taste for goth and geometry, about to fight a Japanese warrior in outer space. In a nutshell, that’s what the concept store Ra has set up in Paris during menswear fashion week.

The ambitious multidisciplinary store opened in Antwerp in October 2009, bringing together fashion, art, music – and shopping of course. For a week only, it shipped its most promising designers to the city of lights: feathers, plastic, tranny chic mixed with unisex elegance – Ra is showing clothes that will give any French woman a heart attack.

The Galerie Forêt Verte in the 3rd arrondissement, a usually bare, ground floor studio, is totally transformed for the occasion: the space now looks like a fairy tale scenery, with wooden sculptures, stage installations, art works, old or found objects – there, the clothes become part of the bizarre landscape. A total of 12 designers are on show, and demonstrate a broad range of talents. This includes Australian-born fashion graduate from the Antwerp Academy Narelle Doré, who experiments with textiles, textures, like landscapes. Daniel Andresen, also a graduate from the Antwerp Academy, creates dark tailored creatures, contrasted with minimalistic sportswear elements.

French Fashion designer and artist Elise Gettlife offers a very un-Parisian view of clothes design – in the original shop, she completes the clothes displays with her own wall paintings. There, her clothes mix manga influences with surrealism, comic strips, and Egon Schiele.

Japanese designer Sayaka Yamamoto, a graduate from the Design Academy of Eindhoven is showing jewelry and accessories. Her work oscillates between art design and jewelry,  but always bears natural elements, a consistant organic feel as well as references to childhood. Sayaka is also half of design duo BCXSY, with counterpart Boaz Cohen.

Other chosen ones include French founder’s work Romain Brau, La Cambre (Belgium) graduate Giuseppte Virgonne who mixes fashion and performance art, or Lena Lumelsky, a Russian-born, Antwerp-trained designer, who mixes Science-fiction with 90s Helmut Lang lines.

“Fashions fade, style is eternal.”, once said Yves Saint Laurent. Sure, feathers and leather will fade, but Antwerp style is here to stay.

Ra13 at Galerie Forêt Verte, 3 cité du Petit Thouars, 75003 Paris