In 1986, a group of young Belgian designers rented a van big enough for them and their collections and headed to London Fashion Week. They had all graduated from Antwerp’s Royal Academy of Fine Arts between 1980 and 1981, and were convinced that London was where they needed to go to get noticed. 

“You had Vivienne Westwood, Katherine Hamnett, BodyMap, Culture Shock and John Galliano,” Geert Bruloot, the owner of cult shoe shop Coccodrillo, told Dazed in 2015. “We all united, rented a truck and went to London to show the collections, and that’s where it started.” 

As well as Bruloot, other passengers inside the truck included Dries Van Noten, Ann Demeulemeester, Walter Van Beirendonck, Dirk Van Saene, Dirk Bikkembergs and Marina Yee. Once they arrived at the British designer show space, the group displayed their work on the top floor – typically where the bridal collections were found and where few bothered to venture. The Belgian designers found a solution by putting up posters around the space, and soon, buyers from Barney’s had put in an order. It wasn’t long after that until the British press had swarmed the mysterious group, yet didn’t know how to properly pronounce their names, thus dubbing them The Antwerp Six. 

Next year, marking the 40th anniversary since they first rented that van, Antwerp’s MoMu fashion museum is set to host a new major exhibition celebrating the Antwerp Six, guest curated by Bruloot. 

“The Antwerp Six helped shape recent fashion history,” says MoMu director Kaat Debo. “We are immensely proud that we can bring the work of these six iconic designers together for a unique, in-depth view of their legacy and their influence.” 

It also marks the first time that a major exhibition is devoted to the six designers, exploring each of their trajectories, from leaving the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, to changing the course of fashion history. The exhibition will open on March 28 2026 and will run until January 2027.