“There were so many rumors, like Raf Simons is coming!”
Brandon Wen adjusts his off-shoulder minidress as he recounts his appointment in 2022 to head up the fashion department of the revered Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp. He’s not a famous designer with a gig co-creative directing with Miuccia Prada, but he wasn’t an oddball candidate either.
Wen graduated from the school in 2019, joining a list of prestigious alumni that includes Demna, Martin Margiela, and Walter Van Beirendonck, who held Wen’s new administrative role for 15 years before him. “I don’t want to be critical of what Walter did,” Wen says calmly, with the self-awareness that he is the new kid on the fashion education block. “A lot of the team started here like 20 years ago and were very hungry. Now I have come in and am very hungry and ambitious and want to rebuild things. I also just want things to be a bit more dreamy.”
This year marks the 360th anniversary of the academy and the 60th anniversary of the fashion department. The school’s fashion studios sit atop MoMu—Antwerp’s fashion museum—with panoramic views of the city beneath it. When we spoke Wen was preparing for his first graduate runway show, which was to run approximately four hours but nonetheless sold out to the public in minutes. The buzz in the city ahead of the event was palpable, and Wen was buoyant with excitement; his brain catapulting from topic to topic, only pausing when he was about to say something overtly political about institutional legacy or his general frustrations with the fashion industry.
In his editor’s letter for a revived student magazine (print, not digital!) that he’s championing, he writes: “Our students work tirelessly to make beautiful and personal works of art because they believe in themselves and in the power of fashion. But it is a very strange and scary time to be a young person in fashion.” He is not wrong—A.I, sustainability, celebrity designers, hype, and noise are all making the graduation process unnerving. “They’re afraid about offending people. They’re afraid of cultural appropriation,” he writes. “Fashion used to be less interested in mainstream taste. It used to cater to more artistic tastes. What happened to that? What happened to being educated in art and design and appreciating that? We don’t do all this to sell a t-shirt, huh?”
Wen is determinedly putting fizziness into a frazzled generation. “Brandon embodies the concerns and hopes of a new generation of fashion students,” says Kaat Debo, director of MoMu. “His incredible energy and positive attitude is very inspiring.” The Royal Academy students agree: “Brandon is very open-minded towards our personal approaches to fashion and pushes for more artistic freedom in how we make clothes,” adds Laura Meier Hagested, an MA graduate of the school, who worked on the fashion department’s show poster. “He reminded me to have fun with what I do, which is important to hear in an environment that is also full of pressure and competition.”
His approach is garnering attention across the board and he is cementing relationships with other like-minded institutions. He attended the recent BA show at Central Saint Martins in London and reciprocated the invite. “As a relatively recent graduate himself with masses of global industry experience he has a unique perspective on education,” says Sarah Gresty, BA Fashion course leader at CSM. “He can reflect on his own journey as a student to inform a shift in the focus of the course, giving it added relevance but without damaging the standing Antwerp has within the industry.” Gresty is looking forward to building a relationship with Wen, with a view to a possible future collaboration between these two groundbreaking fashion schools. Watch this space.
Brandon Wen was born in Los Angeles to a Chinese father and a Spanish mother. A hospital architect and an accountant respectively, and his biggest champions, they were both front row at last weekend’s runway extravaganza. After high school, he moved to New York to study Fiber Science and Apparel Design at Cornell University, followed by four years in Antwerp. Post-graduation, he then cut his teeth at Maison Lemarié for Chanel couture in Paris, where he specialized in embroideries. He also worked for Rick Owens and Michèle Lamy, the latter of whom became something of a mentor to him.
“He was working in our Parisian headquarters at Palais Bourbon, cutting tons of tulle, and I stole him,” emails Lamy. “I was working on a Cecilia Bengolea performance in 2019 in New York, and Brandon ended up being one of the main dancers and also helped style us in my Comme des Garçons archive,” she writes. “He can do anything. Cut wood, perform, create. He makes us all dance. Being creative director of the fashion department of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Antwerp is his world right now. It’s a place he’s always cherished.”
Wen found out he had gotten the job on a train. He says he screamed when he got the news, then just sat there for 45 minutes not moving. It’s hard to picture him sitting still. Watching him in action, whether with students, journalists, and Marni’s Francesco Risso, who turned up for the runway show, Wen’s excitement levels are set to high. It’s the same when he talks about fashion’s place in the culture and his goals for Antwerp within the fashion landscape.
What was the draw of Antwerp for you? Were you obsessed with the Antwerp 6?
I saw a lot of joy and playfulness in Antwerp. There’s a lot of energy. You feed off of the other people here and the school gave me a lot of confidence. I didn’t get that in the States! I was obsessed with the Antwerp 6 but in a strange way I was more into some lesser known graduates from the school that were really pushing creativity and fashion hard. If you haven’t heard of them, you should definitely look them up: Mariel Manuel, Minju Kim, Elise Getliffe, Manon Kundig, Susan Gasanov. Europe also brought me down a bit in a good way. I still enjoy my manic American attitude, I think that’s important, but Europe is a bit more of a peaceful way of doing things. Part of the reason Europe is so good at art and design is because it’s more suited to creating, whereas in America you are so busy surviving.
Tell me about the fashion inspirations of your childhood. How did the creative spark flare for you?
After I watched Star Wars I: The Phantom Menace, I became obsessed with Queen Amidala [played by Natalie Portman]. There was a cupboard where my mum kept all the winter blankets. I would pull them out and drape them on myself. I was also obsessed with the skirt of the Christmas tree. I would put these things on, prance around and it’s funny because I feel like it’s what I am still doing [laughs]. Around 7th grade, I did a book report on Yves Saint Laurent. I ended up sewing a dress as part of this project, then I watched Project Runway and loved the energy of that, and eventually my mom bought me a sewing machine. The same teacher I did the book report for was in charge of a performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream and I became costume designer. I was making all these fairy skirts, I was gluing vines to leggings, and it was a huge confidence boost.
What is your vision for Antwerp fashion at the Academy?
Finding the balance between the traditional things that the school is about and what’s new. There needs to be more communication and open-mindedness. I want to hire more international people and work on the school’s reputation outside of Antwerp—I think it has rested on its laurels for a while in this regard. What we do is creativity and that is the most important thing in our curriculum, but it’s important to be aware of what else is happening in the wider industry and the hope is to bring in—and we started a bit of this this year—external motivating people for lectures and workshops. The formatting of the courses can be dry. I learned so, so much after school when I was with Michèle [Lamy] and meeting people. I learned that you don’t have to be this or that, or even a designer, but it helps to see other ways to run things!
How have you observed the students this year? What are they talking about?
They’re afraid of creating fashion that doesn’t look like ‘fashion’ should, whatever that even means! They have so many good ideas, but it’s interesting that they want to push themselves creatively but sometimes in practise, through the process, they pull it back and then they hide, and then they make it less bold. This is for us as a school a work in progress. But encouragingly, they’re all looking for more intelligent critical points of view, particularly with social media and all the noise. But look, it’s Antwerp, in the end it will be bold, it’s kind of out of control here! [laughs]. And it’s my job and the school’s job to be demanding, but of cause also to support them.
What inspires you?
Flowers and nature. We were walking the other day, and you stand near a tree, all the light is coming through and you see these leaves, and you’re like what possessed this tree to grow like this? It happens without anyone telling it to do that. I bought a book two years ago on ikebana [Japanese flower arranging] and I’ve become obsessed, and now I do my little arrangements. It makes me feel calm and excited. When you’re standing in front of nature and you’re both in awe and terrified, you’re in the presence of something much bigger than you, it’s a romantic feeling, sublime. It can be a similar feeling for me about the magic of fashion, when you’ve done the work, and you’re excited. I also like traditional folk costumes, I am always looking at those. I like regalia and the weight of meanings that traditional clothing and costumes can carry.
What is fashion’s place in culture now?
Fashion’s role in culture is a bit meaningless at the moment compared to what it should be. Patrick Robyn, Ann Demeulemeester’s husband, said to me that when they were younger it was about having an ordinary body with extraordinary clothes on top of it. Now there is a shift—we have extraordinary bodies but we put very ordinary clothes on them! We don’t value clothing anymore. The beauty part of it. Fashion right now is about looking like everyone else, and it sucks. There’s too much [fashion] and it’s too fast. It’s very hard business-wise to slow things down. Even luxury is beginning to feel disposable. The answer to change is to re-educate the consumer. You see some younger brands going smaller and less fast. This is important to focus on and spotlight instead of the big brands that are churning things out. Students need to see people doing alternative business styles. You can organize a business around your skills and it doesn’t have to just take a cookie cutter approach. That’s how art is. No one is asking you to make a painting!
Is fashion art?
It depends who you ask. But more importantly, why can’t we function more like artists? A painter makes 12 paintings, very intimately, very personally, shows them, sells them, or they’re given to a museum, then moves on. I know that clothes are different but why can’t we work more in this way? What if you just made enough for the people who want them? Sustainability is just a word thrown around. It’s more important to be responsible; to the materials, the people you work with, sell to, everyone connected to the process. But yes, for me fashion is art, no question.
