designer fabric shopping in Antwerp
Thanks to a darling co-worker who knows how much I love spending money on fabric, I learned that two designer fashion labels were hosting a sample sale in early May in Antwerp (Belgium, of course! About 45 minutes from where I live). It was specifically advertised that they were selling fabric (in addition to clothes, of course), which really piqued my interest. Some Googling led me to find out that this was something of a city-wide event for designer labels in Antwerp, called Belmodo Fashion Days.
(I’m not too fluent in fashion history, but Antwerp is quite a hub for designers, labels, and fashion houses; check out the Antwerp Six if you want to learn more!)
From what I can tell, it seems like it’s only one week per year, but the specific dates are announced as early as January/February, and then they have handy maps and lists of who’s participating closer to the event. (The site is in Dutch/French, but the map itself is in English.) The main bummer moment was realizing that Dries van Noten had their fabric sales a couple weeks prior to the main sample sales, and was only selling clothes at the time I went. I’ve already set a calendar notification for next April to not miss out!
I don’t work on Fridays, so I made a game plan to hopefully skip the weekend crowds and explore the city kid-free. I made a list of stores that mentioned selling fabric, checked out their websites to try to get an idea of what fabrics might be available, mapped them all out (Google Maps lets you make “my places” maps with custom pins on them) and decided which stores I wanted to visit based on location/priority. Then I added walking directions from the Centraal Station, downloaded it as an offline map, and I was ready.
I had no idea what to expect, but it turned out to be an overall good experience!
…