In the 1980s Ann lived as she designed: in Maison Guiette, a Le Corbusier house, sensitively restored by architect George Baines under her instruction and coloured as Corbusier had it 50 years before that in yellow, red, off-white and blue, lamps hanging from the ceiling, with bare bulbs and no shades. Decades later, once she’d left her fashion house, she became a potter. Refined and perfect, just like her clothes had been. Today she has collaborated with her husband, Patrick Robyn, on an idiosyncratic line of furniture of graphic lines, in black, white and red for Serax, along with homeware.
Dries, meanwhile, expanded his first showrooms, which had a taste of the theatrical, into his stores: in Antwerp he used the Belle Epoque store where his forebears worked, and in Paris he chose a former bookstore in a 17th-century town house on the Quai Malaquais in the antiques quarter (WoI June 2007) and another 18th-century building just down the street for menswear. The establishments were transformed into full-blown interior statements, with bold-coloured 18th- and 19th-century furniture, as well as 20th- and 21st-century flourishes. It was, as Dries said at the time, ‘the first time we approached a store as something more than just a place to show clothes’. I saw him once in my part of Manhattan (just below 14th Street and above Washington Square Park), sleuthing places among the buildings where the adventurous sold antiques. Since then, he has hand-picked both the store buildings (for their architectural features or historical influence) and the furniture, including art, with a spotlight on local makers.
Mirrored panels lead to the ‘drawing room’ in Van Noten’s Paris store, seen here in 2007. Clothes hang in a self-designed giltwood Neo-Napoleonic bookcase; the tapestry stool with gilded Rococo feet is 18th-century, while fabric for one of the cushions was cut from the train of a 19th-century Parisian gown (WoI June 2007). Photograph: Jacques Dirand
As for Marina Yee, Dirk Bikkembergs, Walter van Beirendonck and Dirk van Saene, their contributions to interior design glimmered through their work at the defining exhibition about the Antwerp Six at MoMu, Antwerp, brilliantly curated by Geert Bruloot and Romy Cockx. Geert had opened his shoe store, Coccodrillo, in 1983, with his partner, Eddy Michiels. He met the six in March 1985, in the preparations for the third Golden Spindle competition (a mark of excellence, founded by the government). ‘They had tremendous energy and determination,’ he remembers. ‘It was amazing to move in the same direction with a group of people.’ It was because of him that the Antwerp Six came to show in London and were given that collective name; they were that much stronger as a result. (No matter how much they regretted being grouped together. As the show brilliantly emphasises, each one is fundamentally different from the next.)