Following the thread of our In Vogue: The 1990s podcast, we are closing out the year and heading into the new one with a series of newly digitized archival shows from the decade that fashion can’t—and won’t—let go of. Ann Demeulemeester’s spring 1998 ready-to-wear collection was presented in October 1997 in Paris.
Ann Demeulemeester, one to two female members of the Antwerp Six and a designer acclaimed for introducing deconstruction to fashion, retired in 2013, but rarely a day goes by that I don’t think about her work. The ways in which Demeulemeester built fluidity and nonchalance into clothes using ingenious cuts and poetic drapery have always moved me.
Demeulemeester didn’t follow trends or use elaborate sets; instead she told stories and evoked deep emotions through materials and construction. Her process was as instinctual as it was innovative. She was her own fit model and her focus was always on “real” clothes, but ones that were nonetheless imbued with magic.
The designer’s spring 1998 “Corps Humain” (Human Body) collection seems particularly resonant in this COVID-ravaged year, when each cough and every ache feels like a warning signal. We are hyper-aware of our bodies, our physicality, and our fragility. Demeulemeester, who recently started making pottery, has spent isolation with her husband Patrick Robyn in the Dutch countryside. She graciously agreed to share the story of “Corps Humain,” one of her favorite collections, with us. Read about it below.
“The start was that I was thinking about Dadaism, the Dadaism of somebody like Marcel Duchamp, one of my favorite artists. I was a bit in that mood, [and then] I discovered a poem of Allen Ginsberg called “Footnote to Howl”—that is one thing. The second thing is that Patti Smith had a new record out and with exactly that poem she made a song.
It was really this kind of magic moment when I heard it; it was really like a magic spell. This poem talks about everything—really everything—that is holy. I was already working with my Dadaistic idea of the body, and then to have all of a sudden this word and everything attached to it, I just had to work with that. [Ginsberg] says this also: “the body is holy, you are holy, the arm is holy.”
I found this chain so beautiful: Allen Ginsberg makes a poem, Patti brings it into the world like 20 years later. I thought it would be beautiful if I could be one step further in the chain and bring the message that I found so beautiful to my audience. I was in love with this poem.
One of the first things I decided was that I would make 2,000 tank tops with the word holy on them and give one to everybody who comes to the show, expressing that you are holy to me, that everybody is holy. Two thousand holy people in one space: Would that not be magic? That was my dream. And also to further this message that Patti and Allen started.
Why a tank top? I chose a tank top because I think it’s beautiful. I often am inspired by children because their nudity is so innocent and so fragile, and if you put a man’s tank top on a child, which I did with my son, it just looked so holy, you know? By the way, I let him finish the show with Kirsten [Owen]. He said, ‘Oh, mom, can I walk too?’ I said, ‘Yeah, why not?’
I can give some examples of this Dadaistic approach. I was making nude arm pieces and printing on them in big letters left arm, or right arm. It’s so absurd, but I thought it was so beautiful to say, ‘Well, my leg is holy. Look!’ I translated it in French, so instead of human body, I had corps humain.
At a certain moment when I was cutting I found something really special, which was, to me, really interesting to work on. Maybe it’s not for somebody else, but anyway, I enjoyed myself a lot by doing that. I was working on the back of the garments and I opened the back in the middle and I folded it inside. I was trying to imagine that this piece that I folded inside would become the front of something that is under the garment; so like one garment that becomes two in the front with a naked back. You can see this on the last outfit, the one that Kirsten is wearing. She has a vest and a jacket and a trouser. From the front you would think it’s a three-piece suit, but the back is folded inside and becomes the vest of the jacket. So in the front, you have this three piece-suit, which is really chic, but in the back, you have the sensuality of a woman’s back.
I developed this idea in a lot of things: sweaters, dresses, shirts. For instance, if you look at outfit number seven, Amber Valletta has like a T-shirt and a shirt, but these pieces are attached to each other. It’s one piece and her back is bare. It’s complicated [to explain]; it’s very difficult [as well]. I never wanted to make tricky clothes, I wanted them to look real but intriguing, and this idea had it all; I could make real clothes, like a vest and a jacket, but completely change them.
In this particular collection I wanted to have some signal columns, real colors in complete contrast with my black-and-white story. It was important to me to find a way to [use color] because this stretch fabric that I developed felt really modern to me at that time, and I thought, I need these bodies of Yves Klein who are in this very vivid blue. It was a very new invention then, this fabric that was really stretching in a really nice quality that could do that close-to-the-body work.
So the blue and the colors you’re seeing are in that material. Take look 77, you see that over the stretch there is a printed silk tulle? I liked that you didn’t really know [what the print was]: Is it wet? Is there a stain? I thought, I need a color like [Yves Klein blue], one that is really intense so maybe you’d forget about the material, you’d just see that color, and that could be interesting too. It was an experiment for me. You must not forget at that time you needed a lot of ideas because you were supposed to do shows of 85 outfits, so we made different stories.
I like to juxtapose. I like the contrast between something that is cut really perfectly and something that is alive and draped. I love to work on cuts and I love to work on drapes. Those are the two things that are important to me. I love to make clothes, so I use all the possible ways and I love to put them in contrast with each other. I don’t know if it’s masculinity [or] femininity, but it’s hard and it’s soft and it’s strong and it’s fragile, all these things.
I don’t think I use a lot of asymmetry; what I use is gravity and the way a garment falls and hangs. If you drop a T-shirt from one shoulder it will look asymmetric, but it’s not; it’s just a T-shirt that hangs. It can give you a certain nonchalance that is beautiful. That’s how this asymmetry came along, because I wanted to express a movement in my clothes and really to cut movement into the cut and into the shape. You can really translate emotions by how something is falling or hanging on a body.
One little thing, which is nice to know too, is that in this collection, look 10, that jacket in particular came to be one of the absolute favorites of Patti and she wore it until it was completely broken, and now it is in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.
To come back to the times we live in now, I think that we are very aware of our body, and I think our body is the most sophisticated machine. The older I get, the more that I’m aware of that—and the fact that I only have one. I cannot stitch a new one, you know. It’s my body and I have to take care of it and I have to respect it. With COVID this becomes very present. I think a lot of people, all of a sudden, realize that they have to respect their body and have to be careful.
How did people react to this show at the time? Well, I must say I felt there was magic in the room when this music played and the spell of this, holy, holy, holy, and then these girls came out…There was something sacred about it. After the show, everybody was so happy with their tank top that they started wearing it, and in a minimum of time it became an iconic piece, and it’s still in the collection to this day.”
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
