Veronique Branquinho interviewed by Penny Martin
At what point were you first aware that you were becoming a fashion designer?
I was quite young when I determined to be a designer. I was maybe around fourteen years old and I was interested in drawing. I noticed the emergence of the famous ’six’ Belgian designers [Walter van Beirendonck, Ann Demeulemeester, Marina Yee, Dirk van Saene, Dries Van Noten and Dirk Bikkembergs]. It was the first time that I connected to fashion, because I loved fashion, but it always seemed really far away from me. It was the period of Montana, Mugler, Gaultier; very much fashion as a show. Very far away. When I saw those Belgian designers I felt ‘yes, this is what I understand and what I could do’. I was really closely connected to them, so they gave me the start. Then I moved from a normal school to an art school, in preparation for the Academy.
Of what relevance is your training at the Fashion Department of The Fine Arts Academy of Antwerp to your current practice?
There are two aspects to this. I see this like a phase, in a lifetime. I don’t think what I do now has much to do with the Academy. I came to the Academy in 1991 when I was eighteen years old, not a fully formed person. They help you to discover what’s inside of you. They don’t force you to do things, they just help you to say what you have to say. You get more formed and when you leave (in 1995) you’re more certain of yourself. More secure. Then, when you start your own collection (for me, in 1997), it’s nothing that you can be prepared for. It’s not something you can learn about. It was a very useful phase of my life, to have been surrounded by creative people like painters, photographers, a lot of my friends come from the Academy. It was a very important time of self-discovery.
Can you describe how you approach designing a new collection: which bits do you keep and which do you discard?
Those decisions are made very intuitively. When I’m working on a collection, I’m looking for a certain shape or a certain form of garment. For me, it’s like the pure form that’s important. It’s like purity. When you find that pure shape, I don’t see the need to change it every six months because it’s summer or winter. That’s why I keep a lot of the same shapes. That’s the base, you know. Like when I was looking for the perfect pair of trousers. I worked a long time to have this shape. Of course I will do other shapes, but for me, those are the essence. It’s difficult in a society that is so reliant on change, and some use the charge of continuity as a form of criticism, doing the same things. But it’s a big collection, like ninety different models, and (of which) maybe only six are the same.
Do you have any stock sources of inspiration that help you out in a creative crisis?
I have notebooks everywhere in the house. Every time I think of something, I just make a note. When I start working on a collection, sometimes it’s really conceived in my head: ‘its going to be that’, and I start with a certain mood. Then sometimes I want colour: it’s more of an abstract process, like a mood. It’s very difficult to talk about. Those notebooks, I always have a look at and some ideas from them fit into the collection. I start more with a mood than with a shape or something. The first few seasons were very much about this ‘double life’, duality and womenhood. I could find that in Twin Peaks’ Laura Palmer. Since then, it’s been following me, this character of Laura Palmer. In any collection of mine, it’s about the question ‘what is a woman? What is the inner nature of being a woman?’ It’s still about what you feel.
Much has been made of the treatment of femininity in your clothes. What you have characterised as a ‘duality’ of womanhood or the progression from girl to woman in the designs, some critics have identified as a lack of overt sexuality. Do you think this is a fair assessment?
Sometimes people say my designs are sexless and I feel ‘oh my God! It’s not meant to be!%