Modemuseum/The Fashion Museum: Backstage

Despite a 1997 article in Business Week that stated, "It is difficult to imagine Antwerp, one of Europe's major seaports, as a center of fashion," Antwerp has become just that. Today, the city enjoys a superior reputation for fashion design, knitting out more edgier avant-garde designers than Rei Kawakubo could shake a polkadot at. In insightful texts, fashion ephemera, and dynamically laid out reproductions of garments--seen in catwalks and museum cases, storage facilities and illustrations--Backstage considers the past and present tense of fashion as well as the question of Belgium's sudden role as avant-garde design central. With extreme foresight, the city of Antwerp decided more than 30 years ago to place particular emphasis on the encouragement of fashion. The history of the Fashion Museum of the Province of Antwerp (MoMu) dates back to the textile collection of the Sterckshof in Deurne, where, in 1967, a lace exhibition led to the formation of a separate department of costume and textiles. Today the museum has a permanent location in Antwerp and a new dynamic, with a modern section in addition to its historical one.