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Antwerp: low lands, high fashion

01.01.70

Antwerp is a sexy city. Not like lacy negligée Paris or gaudy G-string New York, but sexy like a new pair of expensive white cotton boxers: understated, sophisticated and stylish. Young people here are disarmingly attractive and well-dressed, they speak impeccable English and, if my Friday night out in the second largest Belgian city is anything to go by, also preternaturally friendly. My partner and I left the bar Le Chat Roi on the Hoxton Square-y Leopold de Waelplaats having made a lot of new friends. Though frankly, everyone's your BFF after three pints of Delirium.

While Antwerpians' affable charm may come as a surprise (you thought they were as earnest as Tintin and as bland as a box of Godiva, right?), their sartorial savvy shouldn't, because Antwerp is home to one of the world's best fashion schools, The Royal Academy of Fine Arts, and the associated Mode Museum (MoMu). In the 1980s it staked its place on the international fashion map thanks to The Antwerp Six, a collective including, among others, Ann Demeulemeester, Walter Van Beirendonck, Dries Van Noten and Martin Margiela, most of whom still live and work in the city. Pulling up at the Hotel O, I assumed we had stumbled upon an after-party for one of these iconic designers' shows. After 8pm, entrance to the hotel is via its bar, Nero, and outside the bar, even on a frosty December night, stood several very tall blond people wearing some very directional outfits in a variety of shades of black. They huddled beneath a heater, tapping their leather boots to the DJ's Euro house music. But alas, it was just an average Antwerp night out. We made a very unfashionable entrance, barging through the throng with our weekend bags and demanding to know where we could check in. But we redeemed ourselves in the style stakes later when, after a quick change in our industrial-chic room (black mirrors, concrete surfaces and lighting that wouldn't go brighter than a nightclub glow), we re-emerged ready to take on the glamazons and crossed the cobbled square to Le Chat Roi where our night descended into a blur.

Source: Evening Standard