EMERGE just returned from a quick weekend trip to lovely Antwerp, Belgium which as anybody worth their Martin Margiela and Ann Demeulemeester knows is one of the fashion capitals of Europe. Though we only had one day to really check out the city, a super-cool local took us on a small tour of some of Antwerp's finer designer shops. Our favorite by miles was the eponymous flagship of Walter Van Beirendonck, who is renowned as one of the orignal Antwerp Six alongside Margiela, Demeulemeester, Dries Van Noten, Dirk Van Saene, Dirk Bikkembergs and Marina Yee.

A graduate of the city's Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Van Beirendonck has been making waves on the far left of the fashion world since he debuted his line in 1983. Renowned for extreme deconstruction and an absurdist sense of whimsy, Walter's clothing became something of the de facto uniform for Beligum's once vibrant New Beat scene, a regional variant of the house and techno music that emerged from Chicago and Detroit in the mid-to-late 1980s and quickly took over clubs the world over. While New Beat may have faded back into obscurity even in it's native Belgium, but Walter is thriving.

Not only a prominent designer in his own right, Walter has been teaching at his alma mater since 1985, helping to groom many of the younger generation of Belgium's fashion design elite. He also designs a childrens collection called ZULUPAPUWA for JBC and serves as Artistic Director for Scaapa Sports while also managing to lend his unique aesthetic to all manner of one off projects, from designing the furniture in his shop (including an 8 meter long reclining teddy bear housing a dressing room as well as display space for his childrens' clothes), to creating a special edition Nissan Micra complete with red scaly protuberances and silver lame seats.

Despite the humorous overtones to all of his work, Van Beirendonck imbues each collection with more serious themes as well, utilizing red thread throughout his collections to emphasize the importance of safe sex for example. Additionally, he gives each collection a weighty theme to serve as counterpoint to his radical designs, naming the current season "Stop Terrorizing Our World" and dubbing previous years "Revolution," and "Respect Rethink React" to name just a couple.

Of the stuff on offer inside the cavernous Walter shop, EMERGE was particularly fond of a necklace designed so that the wearer looks like their throat has been slashed and is gushing bright, plasticky blood. Not for the faint of heart, but as Gordon Hull of Surface To Air says, "Walters work is clever and whimsical in a way that makes me think he knows more than he lets on."

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