Belgium is known for big-ticket fashion designers like Martin Margiela, Anthony Vaccarello and Raf Simons, as well as its institute in Antwerp where The Antwerp Six (Walter Van Beirendonck, Ann Demeulemeester, Dries Van Noten, Dirk Van Saene, Dirk Bikkembergs and Marina Yee) made their names. But besides the design aspect of the country, what are people wearing in Brussels, the capital?
Brussels is a bit of an odd place.
Eclectic, random, and quirky.
Irreverent with an assortment of coats.
As is the fashion, October’s streets are doused with trash bags spilling over with junk — tin cans, birthday balloons, styrofoam takeout, orange peels. Autumn leaves are stuffed and bagged — orange abscission wrapped in plastic. A pile of garbage sits beneath statues in a roundabout, obscuring the plaque and the view of the church behind. The chill is setting in. Legs are far from bare, and balaclavas and gloves maintain the veneer. Curled and ill-disciplined hair drowns in wind. Linen pants are an unwise choice. It is time to don some Evisu jeans, a tank top, a Cavalli shirt, a leather vest, a bomber jacket and some boots. The vibe of Brussels is to wear whatever you want. Nobody cares — much.
Most people know it as the headquarters of NATO or the centre of the European Union, and often as a city with a strong beer culture that eats mussels with fries. The most famous statue in Belgium is a small 15th-century fountain sculpture of a little boy urinating. The Manneken Pis figure gets dressed-up dozens of times throughout the year, features on beer labels (like the Blanche De Bruxelles) and is mentioned in the beginning of Pissing Figures 1280–2014, by Jean-Claude Lebensztejn, the book I am currently reading. The fashion here reflects this playful, oddball spirit. Unlike other cosmopolitan capital cities in Europe, Brussels is neither snobbish, prudent, nor vivacious (wanky, uptight, lively). It is a bit of everything, a blend of influences from everywhere that can muddy the palette or pop with colour.
Brussels, on most days, is far from a concours d’élégance. However, if you are with a bunch of creative people, the story is different. There is a casual elegance around the design scene, with artists, musicians and creatives spilling from cities like Paris and Berlin into the scruffiness of Brussels. The blend of influences creates an unpretentious and playful landscape where people can do whatever they want. With this comes many unconventional aesthetics — a TN VaporMax under a sports sock and lace stocking is as bewilderingly casual as the Manneken Pis adonis dressed in FC Barcelona.
A rosy-fingered dawn wakes the home. Coffee is ground, and a whir of stripes descend the staircase. The house dress code is unexpected and relaxed, with a slew of patterns and colours. Salome Sperling and Jaime Le Bleu line their bedroom ceiling with a vibrato of red and white. The house loves shapes and stripes, partially thanks to Jean-Paul Gaultier and what Line Murken called the “feeling of being childish as an adult”. They drink coffee downstairs in crumpled and worn pyjamas. Striped and silky. Sperling considers the city’s fashion eclectic. Clothing doesn’t need to be current and clean to be interesting — or beautiful, for that matter.
We get changed. Jamie and I sit in the bored snarl of traffic. He sees everything as chaotic and weirdly put together, including the architecture. I notice skirts and mesh tights, big furs and furrowed brows, layers over layers and the prolific baggy pants that are still trending here. The city makes one feel comfortable in the unkempt, like a lifesize wax statue by Gavin Turk where the artist becomes the ‘bum’. A stranger thinks of Brussels as “a dirty girl with clean stockings”, and outside the conventional drabness of the business district, dark colours can be seen broken up by the odd blue and red (I mean, The Smurfs and Tintin came from Belgium).
Nothing is very serious regarding sartorial choices: a fedora or homburg hat might be seen on a weekday, and posters of a mayoral candidate in a bow tie hint at a homage to Elio Di Rupo, Prime Minister from 2011 to 2014. In another part of town, throngs of big bazaar shops slump into the Turkish Quarter, shoe stores sit between a dazzling grub of buildings and unpolished concrete masses, and forbidding cliffs of beautiful Gothic structures rear up around cracked pavement, seething weeds under the powder-grey sky and pewter black night. There is a lot of grey here. “It’s a bit depressing and paradoxical”, says artist Carolin Gieszner. “It’s nice that these choices don’t really matter, and there’s no judgment for what you wear or how many things you have in your wardrobe.”
“On the other side, people can sometimes not care at all”, she continues. A little dirt and grime is OK, but it shows in the city. “It is a place that is dirtier than it has to be. You can relax and be lazy around the city, but seeing more beauty and colours would be nice.”
Carolin isn’t wrong. The city has become a bit squalid, and people’s wardrobes mostly stick to neutral tones. “It’s practically a landfill”, says 26-year-old Dutch designer Sijmen Vellekoop, who wears a broad palette and vibration of colour. “On the metro, it would be great if people saw these colours, so they realise they have options and can experience fashion differently, beyond just black, grey, and white.” These days, fashion is about “vergane glorie” (decaying glory), influenced by everything and nothing at once. There is no emphasis on high fashion – unlike the kids wreathed in Ann Demeulemeester on Antwerp corners. Instead, the city blends tradition and indifference – much like the pissing statue, which occasionally gets hooked up to a keg of beer to “pass gold”. That odd, old fountain captures the city’s cultural heritage and the sense of affordable, mismatched fashion. “There’s a lot of ‘homeless-inspired’ looks”, says a passerby. “Not chic – more like unfinished hems and worn-out vibes. A big mess of mismatched stuff.”
Suits still strut in a stately combination of fun socks and dark blue or grey trousers and gilets as they do in most Western countries. Still, there are fewer beige pants and more than hundreds of second-hand shops with lumped clothes piled up like the Kanye GAP collaboration collection bins and trash bags. Designer Ori Orisun links the second-hand market to Brussels’ diverse fashion scene. “There’s no single fashion in Brussels – it depends on the neighbourhood. In some, you think, ‘Wow, people are cool,’ in others, it feels like a hundred years ago.” Sitting next to her is Nicolas Zanoni, who hails from Paris and observes style emerging from the streets, particularly among young Flemish people, with a vibe reminiscent of Kiko Kostadinov and the loose, scratched, and unconventional garments of the Early Grunge period.
A lot of anti-posh subversions are going on in the younger generations, potentially coming from Antwerp and its Flemish side, which is more influenced by fashion design. It is very international, the people, I mean. It’s not as fashion as Antwerp because Brusseliers don’t spend all their money on their appearance.
People wear whatever – sometimes it is colour-coded, other times it’s a rag-tag mix of 70s Prada or 2010s wastebasket. Jaime, whose Maison Margiela Replicas are being worn to the ground, remarks that “a lot of the time the fashion is a bit ‘unbothered. It’s just not a big deal for some people”. The city doesn’t take itself too seriously. What can look vulgar to some is just blunt and unstressed.
Nico believes “there is less judgement in Brussels (especially compared to Paris), so people don’t really need it”. It can be so boring”, he added. “But it is freer here.”
“That’s it. Brussels is free”, says Sperling. “I always have my own style in how I dress, but here, I care less, and, therefore, I can dare more.”
A puckish impudence in dress and a grinning, pissing sculpture? Sounds about right.
