Dirk Bikkembergs and the invention of football fashion The Belgian fashion designer who was very popular in Italy in the early 2000s and who has forever changed fashion's vision
There was a time when fashion and football were two different and remote worlds, impossible to be synthesized into a unique creation or just thought of together. A time when it was absolutely unthinkable to think that these two languages could somehow be combined without being aesthetically inappropriate, or even 'blasphemous'. It is clear that the evolution that then carries us to the present day, from the merger experiments of Les Vêtements de Football to the mingling of so many fashion giants, inspired by vintage football through the uniforms designed by Hugo Boss and DSQUARED², has necessarily followed precise steps, fundamental to proceeding onto the next ones. Going back in time to find the ancestor of the concept of ambivalence that we are used to seeing today and to understand when fashion started to move towards a different destination, we stop at the beginning of the 80s, and more precisely in Antwerp.
It was necessary to dare, to go beyond the old settling conceptions: from a famous Belgian academy came Dirk Bikkembergs, the visionary designer born in Germany who revolutionized the language of fashion forever: it was 1982 when he graduated from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, the same prestigious school at which, in addition to Martin Margiela, other exponents destined to become famous such as Ann Demeulemeester, Dries van Noten, better known as the 'Antwerp Six' were attendees. After having created the first clothing collections in which something original was already visible, a masculine and a feminine, he arrived in Italy on the threshold of 2000 with very clear ideas, even though he had never been a football fan.
The project was so unprecedented that it was called a reality-shop, given that the Belgian designer decided to place a real footballer inside the store, making it his personal apartment, complete with a bell shaped like a football shoe. It's not a joke, the former Brera Calcio defender Andrea Vasa moved in for some months, thus fulfilling the dream that Bikkembergs had been harboring for over 20 years: the featured soccer player.
The brand remained cool even after some quite serious financial issues: problems with the Italian tax authorities, the accusations that later proved unfounded of tax evasion and the inevitable decline in the brand's appeal. Years after having concluded the relationship with Inter Milan, a team for which Bikkembergs designed the game jerseys also dealing with the formal uniforms and also collaborated with the women's team, the relationships of the Belgian with the world of football has faded over the years, without ever disappearing from the scene. A decade after the real boom, Bikkembergs entered into another important partnership with the Spaniards of Malaga, returning from the quarter-finals in the Champions League: an agreement whereby the Belgian took care of the club's image by designing the uniforms, the casual clothing and the line of footwear for the whole team, maintaining the usual elegant and informal imprint at the same time.
After the Andalusian team, above all after falling into Chinese hands (since 2015 the brand is controlled by Modern Avenue, though the production has remained Made in Italy) the most recent collaborations with the Slovenian national football team and one Russian one have arrived, dressed from head to toe at the recent 2018 Russian World Cup thanks to the eye of Lee Wood, the former Versace creative director who tried to reconnect the thread of the past that seemed to have broken, the true essence of Bikkembergs: fashion and football.