The name Ann Demeulemeester may be unfamiliar to those in the design world, but not to fashionistas. The creative woman is in fact part of the ‘Antwerp Six’, the designers who brought Belgian fashion to international attention in the 1980s.
In 2014, she left the brand she had founded in 1985 together with her husband, photographer Patrick Robyn. And together they dedicated themselves to renovating an old country house and the surrounding land, with the idea of making it a manifesto of their aesthetic. From landscape design to interior design.
In her studio Ann began to model clay, studied the old techniques for making porcelain and mixing glazes and purchased a professional kiln. In pursuing this visual research, her first plates, bowls, cups, dishes and vases came into being. A new creative vein that in 2018 found a partner in Serax, a Belgian company specialising in household objects,
Lamps, cutlery, frames, glassware were added to these early items. The most recent category in this catalogue is furniture. Robyn and Demeulemeester think with their hands, interrogating ideas in three dimensions like sculptors. This approach has been honed over the years, distancing them from the cycle of trends that dominated their former field, fashion, and instead allowing them to build their own distinctive universe.
Furniture is not a departure for them but part of a much larger, ongoing work. Squares, rectangles, circles, triangles and crosses are stacked and staggered to create new shapes.
Rather than project themselves into the lives of others, Demeulemeester and Robyn often develop pieces that answer their own needs or explore a personal interest. “I make something because I miss it, I want it, and I can’t find it,” says Demeulemeester.
As the Ann Demeulemeester – Serax collections continue to expand, a new showroom for the collaboration has been created by Robyn at Serax’s headquarters just outside Antwerp. A special place where curved walls, discrete openings and a wall of curtains add a sense of the unexpected.
