Let others roam the desert. Sébastien Meunier’s home base in Antwerp puts him in an ideal position to look to the sea. “I wanted to speak about the port at Antwerp, the dockers, the sailors, the fisherman, but with a certain angle,” he said, nodding to Belgian sailors and, particularly, the sexual tension in Fassbinder’s 1982 film Querelle. William Shakespeare, too, was in evidence, with spoken excerpts and T-shirts referencing the tempest of the soul.
Although the sailor shirts may have had some wondering whether the designer was going to go literal, the collection proved a masterful exercise in sensuality. Meunier took a well-worn trope and spliced it neatly together with Demeulemeester’s DNA to make it recognizably his. The result was a lineup of covetable and very wearable pieces—and not just for men—in black, white, and navy, with shots of mauve, mustard, red, and sky blue.
Highlights included several shirts and a double trench. The majority of items could be worn as is or—and this was the designer’s real coup—unbuttoned here and there for a more deconstructed look. Many have tried that tack in recent memory, but few as successfully. As is his wont, Meunier played games with references to works by artist Marcel Broodthaers and snuck in punch lines wherever he could. “It’s like dress and undress,” he said.
