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BELGIAN FASHION DESIGN
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ANDROGYNY ( g e n d e r ) |
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 WALTER VAN BEIRENDONCK: "There was a time when I put aside the whole gender issue. I noticed that it was no more than a matter of education, of particular codes of behaviour. It is fascinating to play these sorts of games, to find out where the boundaries lie, but I do my work without ever wondering whether I'm designing for men or for women. This has nothing to do with transvestism, it's just that I see the sexes as equivalent." |
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Walter Van Beirendonck. Walter Worldwide. Walter Wordwide News 'Fashion is Dead!' - Newspaper Invitation for presentation Spring/Summer 1990 Collection. Photo: Ronald Stoops. |
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| WALTER
VAN BEIRENDONCK: "Certainly as seen from the world of the designer
the story told by the media is extremely inaccurate, lacking in content.
Their stories are always full of qualifications. Sometimes the view of a
single journalist starts to dominate everyone else's views or even becomes
the sole source of inspiration for those other views, which only succeeds
in making the picture still more distorted. "Sometimes the story is more important than the product. The word 'hype' has never had such a sour connotation as today. People treat fashion talent very casually. In Paris people talk about the Kleenex mentality. Something is used for one or two seasons and then thrown away. That's dreadful. But on the other hand if I don't see my clothes in magazines, I can't help feeling that they simply don't exist. A collection has to be consumed, has to turn up in fashion reports, has to be displayed ... The catwalk show, everything that goes to make up a collection, I always do by and for myself, but there comes a time when the product has got to go out into the world. And then the press is really terribly important." |
