AF Vandevorst, The Belgian based designer An Vandevorst (born1968) and Fhilip Arickx (born 1971), viewing the fashion is not more than the communication of the thinking of your mind.
Both husband and wife organized a team in 1987 at the Royal Academy in Antwerp. After passing of graduating, Vandevorst started working as assistant to Dried Van Noten. In the mean time Arickx, who was working for Dirk Bikkembergs for the three years as a teenager, have completed military service after coming out of the academy and began to work as a freelance designer and fashionable artist.
Both have decided to set up their own brand in 1997 and then they exhibited their own stock in Paris for autumn/winter 1998. This brand very rapidly attracted fashion media and the organization, but soon after the exhibition of their second stock they won the Paris Fashion Week’s Venus de la Mode award for ‘Le Futur Grand Createur’, an exuberant award for the people coming in the industry. For the spring/summer and autumn/winter 2000 seasons the couple was asked to design the Ruffo Research Collection, for which Italian leather house Ruffo gave a chance to the young design artists.
AF Vandevorst clothes gives fine confidence, and girlish style that oozes out the sexy yet excellent presentation. Clothing of tradition or normal (horse riding tools, kimonos, frock coats) is pointed out quite more times reworked and refined until it sits slightly left of centre, a medical design red cross is their alluring hint. As for as the collection theme is concerned they often asked for unusual for autumn/winter 2003 when inspiration is taken from honey bees. Without setting of color palette, AF Vandevorst expressed the dull colors into vibrant colors. Presently the brand has extended to shoes, items and lingerie and they still going on to catwalk shows in Paris stock.
