Saturday night was Museumnacht, or Museum Night in Antwerp. All of the museums were open from 7pm until 1am. To attract visitors, each museum had a special event or party. At the Mode Museum (MoMu, Fashion Museum), there was a Bal Costumé sponsored by Ra 13, Diesel Black Gold, and MoMu.

My friend Thomas and I decided to make our own masks. Maybe you remember him from this post: SHOW 2012. Thomas came up with the design and they turned out so well!

Here are a few photos from the event:

I didn’t actually have a chance to visit the exhibit at MoMu, so I went by the next day, Sunday, to see LIVING FASHION Women’s Daily Wear 1750 – 1950 From the Jacoba de Jonge Collection.

Excerpt from the guide book:

Living Fashion. Women’s Daily Wear 1750 – 1950 presents 100 silhouettes from the Dutch collector Mrs. Jacoba de Jonge. With approximately 2500 objects, this important collection will be largely incorporated into the holdings of the Fashion Museum Antwerp. It is one of MoMu’s most significant acquisitions of the last decade.

The exhibition gives an overview of the clothing worn at every specific moment of the day in the lives of middle-class women between 1750 and 1950. From morning and domestic apparel to traveling outfits, from maternity dresses to summer frocks – the women revealed by this collection were very fashionable, but they were not the trendsetters. They followed the fashions of their time as closely as possible. As is true today, people were frugal and creative in keeping up with fashions. Old dresses were adapted and sometimes entirely transformed into new, fashionable silhouettes. Reusing fabrics was perfectly normal, even amongst the aristocracy.

From the mid-19th century, middle-class women began taking part in public life. As shoppers, these new ‘flâneuses’ could get to know their cities from their own perspective. The urban environment gave women new freedom of movement. On the one hand, they followed the dictates of the compelling demands of ever-changing fashions, but it was also fashion that liberated them from their boudoirs. For this reason, it is the 19th century city that forms the symbolic background in which Living Fashion is presented.

In the Gallery of MoMu, Manon Kündig’s Bowerbird Master Collection was on display.  I saw it on the runway when I attended SHOW 2012.  From MoMu’s website:

Each year the Fashion Museum of Antwerp presents a MoMu Award to an MA student at the fashion department of the Royal Academy in Antwerp. This award, to be presented during the jury proclamation in June, gives a single student the opportunity to present his or her collection in an exhibition at the MoMu Gallery. The MoMu Award is for a student whose course of study at the Royal Academy has been exceptionally motivating and whose work stands out in unique visual language.

The recipient of the 2012 MoMu Award is Manon Kündig, with her collection ‘Bowerbirds’:
The male bowerbird, a  little creature that seduces the female by creating an odd composition of both natural and synthetic scraps to show off his creative skills, is a true freak of nature. He is the  central inspiration behind the eclectic silhouettes in this collection. Fusing good and bad taste, unconscious fashion and the male peacock, it shows how keeping up appearances can be done spontaneously and creatively. Materials that pretend to be something different, camouflage prints that are not what they seem, faux carré scarves turned into jackets, in Manon Kündig’s world, rubbish and haute couture are no opposites.

Just like the bowerbird, Manon Kündig also looked at her neighbours’ style for influences: being Swiss residing in Borgerhout, she integrated typical ornamentation, materials and silhouettes that can be seen in this and other district’s cultures. As a true pick-up artist, Kündig collects inspiration from wherever she happens to find it, showing the beauty of l’art du hazard.