Walter Van Beirendonck

The Terror Mask by Walter Van Beirendonck (1957) comes from his winter collection 2003-2004, presented under the aestheticterrorists label. A graduate of the Royal Academy of Fine Art in Antwerp, where he is the current director of the fashion department, Van Beirendonck participated in the early 1980s in the Antwerp Six group whose radical positions concerning fashion design placed them firmly in the Belgian avant-garde. Walter Van Beirendonck’s fashion design is distinguished by its characteristic mixing of genres. A certain violence, a tendancy towards agressivity, along with cartoon and science fiction elements, often underpinned by a biting humour, are the basis of his work. His fashion designs often employ unexpected combinations of fabrics and materials as well as a continuous alternation between colours and cuts.