On Friday, Queen Mathilde of the Belgians travelled to Antwerp for a visit to the Fashion Museum.
Upon her arrival, Her Majesty attended a roundtable discussion on the fashion industry and the toll the global shutdown has had on it.
With the gathering of people being so dangerous, textile production slowed down, and the supply chain got significantly delayed. In addition, the fashion sector was one of the most badly impacted by the massive delays in supply caused by the six days closure of the Suez Canal in March 2021 after a container ship, the Ever Given, got stuck following an accident created by a combination of weather conditions and a possible human error.
At the end of the discussion, Queen Mathilde toured one of the museum’s permanent exhibitions. The show focuses on archive pieces from the museum’s collection, as well as showcasing Belgian avant-garde regarding silhouettes biases (in the fashion industry, a bias is a diagonal cut of the fabric).
To conclude her visit, Her Majesty was offered a tour of the recently remodelled library, where she met with students and sat down among them to take part in a practical lesson on fashion, dressing and textiles.
The museum has recently undergone a massive renovation project that, among other things, has added roughly 800 square metres of space opened to the public for their permanent exhibitions.
The MoMu’s objective is to stimulate curiosity in the industry and to make it more accessible because, as they state on their website, “Fashion is more than clothing and more than “fashion”. It’s a prism to look at the world from different angles. One of the roles of a contemporary fashion museum is to push the meaning of the term ‘fashion’ and move beyond the canonized narratives of fashion history.”
Queen Mathilde has always been one of the most influential supporters of Belgian fashion. She has chosen Belgian designers for virtually every big occasion, at home or abroad, with her favourite being undoubtedly Natan. Its designer, Edouard Vermeulen, has been tasked with designing outfits for her for decades now, including her wedding gown, almost all of her National Day outfits, and a good portion of the outfits she takes on foreign tours and visits.
