Walter Van Beirendonck - Official Website (2024)

In the 90s, street style, club life, and Japanese pop culture merged and manifested in the form of aspirational yet attainable fashion. Cult stores like Sign Of The Times became showcases for the most exciting new designers. Inciting extroverts and the outlandish to shock the staid into submission, three fashion protagonists rose to the forefront: Jean Paul Gaultier with his sexy Parisian wit, Vivienne Westwood morphing from punk maverick to couturier, and Walter Van Beirendonck with his Belgian label W&LT (pronounced Walt) short for Wild & Lethal Trash - the hedonists' label of choice. Waliter's first incarnation as a painter was superseded after he witnessed first hand a fashion show at the Royal Academie in Antwerp. Utterly astonished by the spectacle he was instantly aware that he had found his true calling. He was also quick to realise that by crosspollinating art with fashion you could subvert normal aesthetics and that in his hands, people's preconceptions could, and would, be challenged. Walter was accepted onto the fashion course at the notoriously intense Academie and found himself studying alongside like-minded designers Ann Demeulemeester, Martin Margiela, Dries Van Noten, Dirk Van Saene and Dirk Bikkembergs.While still at college the gang showcased their collections in Paris, and became known as the Antwerp Six. Steadfast in ambitions and single-minded in vision, the six fed off each other's imaginations. It was as Walter recalls "a very beautiful time, so exciting", from which he emerged as the wild-card in a hugely influential pack. In 1985, five years post graduation, Walter started showing under the main line of Walter Van Beirendonck - Walter World-Wide. Eight years of hardcore designing focused him on the burning desire to launch a label specifically orientated towards the youth market. In early 1993 Walter launched Wild & Lethal Trash. A strong statement for individuality, the label was exactly what it proclaimed; wild, saturated colours, nose bleed-inducing prints and an aesthetic steeped in sci-fi futurism and S&M fantasies. More than just a fashion fad, the label became an attainable lifestyle product for the trashbag generation. His fun, visual approach to fashion was like nothing seen before. Inspired by toys, new-media and computers he combined streetwear with the craziness of a Leigh Bowery creation and branded them with "Kiss The Future" and "Puk Puk" the robot bastard child of Mickey Mouse and Astro Boy, giving a futuristic slant to the generic label.Walter's reference points mirrored the fashion press of the time; new and forward-thinking style magazines reeked of the same youthful exuberance and social irreverence. Fashion was exciting and silly, echoing the DIY ethos of punk, and all it took was a savvy German businessman to capitalise on this sudden flow of creativity. Walter was approached with a deal that at the time seemed too good to pass up. Total creative control was offered over W&LT, and in return the backer would come up with the financial clout to make W&LT a worldwide name. Overtly ambitious Walter thought this was a marriage made in fashion heaven and that he was on the way to realising the full potential of his label. Their intense collaboration was hard work, but paid off with commercial and creative success as Walter's six W&LTranges captured the energy and spirit of the time. By 97 the backers behind W&LT feared that his experimentation with materials like latex, rubber and plastics, and hom*o-eroticism would instigate commercial failure. They alleviated Walter of some of his control, instructing him to imitate rather than originate, "I was told what to do, who to copy, which colours to use. The whole spirit of the product was flattened and became extremely commercialised." Walter had stopped designing his main line collections to concentrate on the W&LT range, so had no avenue to showcase his ideas.