Brandon Wen, creative director, Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Antwerp
Los Angeles-born Brandon Wen is a fashion designer and performance artist who trained at Cornell University before arriving at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Antwerp. He succeeded Walter Van Beirendonck as creative director of the fashion department in 2022.
How many students on average are in a cohort?
In the master’s, it’s 17.
What are the qualities/skills you look for in your students?
Generally, we don’t accept a lot of people who haven’t done the bachelor’s [degree] here, because the master’s is only one year. It ends up being a consulting sort of year. For the people we take, it’s personality and character, like if you look at a portfolio and there’s a clear point of view.
While on the course, do your students develop an aesthetic, style or way of designing or thinking?
It’s about what you’re doing or saying that isn’t already being said; your vision needs to be not only strong, but also personal. We’re over the top. So sometimes it’s hard for more minimalist profiles. But it’s not because we’re anti-minimalism. We expect a certain level of intensity and richness in the design. There need to be details that are well thought out. But it’s about having a strong personal identity and making what isn’t already made.
What are the key challenges facing creative education?
As politics gets more conservative, everything gets tighter, less flexible… sometimes modern thinking can hurt a certain freedom that is creativity. And by that, I mean the vagueness of not defining everything as it is. It’s not a ‘crack the whip’ education anymore. You demand and expect a lot, but you’re also guiding them. It’s important that while you are adapting to sensitivities, you also understand there needs to be a challenge, because if there’s no challenge, they don’t grow. In the first year, I have a strict rule about drawing, it must be in a book or on paper. They can try things out digitally if they want. But what I’m looking at in class, it has to be done by hand. If the student is presenting with an iPad, for example, they can show different options. They can undo if they’ve forgotten something, they can Google, search it and pull it in; so many things happen that aren’t decisions, just options. When you draw it in your book and you paint it red, you’ve chosen that red, and you have to live with that choice. It demands more from you when it has to be physically there and your choice, your decision-making skills, actually grow, because then you say, “Okay, shit, I drew this horrible red. I know next time I have to do it differently.”
What are your hopes for your students as they graduate?
I would love to see space created for them. Because you have a lot of students who are talented and artistic and sensitive, and if they were to just go for a brand and make technical drawings, it would be such a depressing end for them. Is there a space where they could work or what brands can they work for? Should we have better relationships with them? Are there incubators we need to know about? I want them to be able to find the space to be the creatives that they are here.
Photography by Lalo + Eva and production by Sonya Mazuryk. Taken from 10 Magazine Issue 76 – CREATIVITY, CHANGE, FREEDOM – out NOW. Order your copy here.