She walks in beauty

The Mode Museum in Antwerp devotes a wonderful exhibition to the very talented Oliver Theyskens.

“She walks in beauty, like the night Of cloudless climes and starry skies”. What could describe better than these verses by Lord Byron the work of the very talented Belgian designer Olivier Theyskens? The ‘Olivier Theyskens: She Walks In Beauty’ exhibition traces the creative evolution and exceptional twenty year career of a designer who has proven himself over and over again. From his beautifully romantic first work, of which I remember vividly an anatomical bodysuit from the Autumn/Winter 1998 collection that I had the pleasure of admiring in the windows of the Maria Luisa boutique in Paris, and the dress worn by Madonna at the Oscars in 1998, a year after Oliver launched his eponymous label after dropping out of the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Visuels de la Cambre in Brussels in 1997 where he was studying fashion. From his inimitable and incomparable interpretation of haute couture first at Rochas and then at Nina Ricci to his take on American fashion at Theory and the recent re-launch of his eponymous label, which the designer defined as a “return to the fundamentals”.
Through pieces from the extensive 25,000 item archives of the Mode Museum in Antwerp, which organised the exhibition, and through loans from museum and galleries and private collections from across the worlds, Theysken’s work is exhibited alongside some of his drawings, sketches, photographs and films as well as excerpts from literary works by a number of different authors including the above mentioned Lord Byron.
The exhibition is at the prestigious Mode Museum in Antwerp, Belgium from the 12th of October 2017
to the 18th of March 2018.