the designers
Dirk Bikkembergs was born on January 2, 1959 in Bonn, Germany. After his high school career, Dirk Bikkembergs was interested to attend law school but eventually decided to start studying at the Royal Academy of fine Arts in Belgium. In 1982 Bikkembergs graduated, together with "The Six", other Belgian designers Ann Demeulemeester, Dries Van Noten, Dirk Van Saene, Walter Van Beirendonck and Martin Margiela.
After his studies, Bikkembergs started working for Belgian fashion designers to earn himself some experience.
Dirk Bikkembergs try to illustrate that the masculine strength in men also exists in women. The women stripped away any macho elements from the men’s collection and illustrated that the men’s strength becomes one of sexiness, power and confidence when translated for women. For the first shows the women joined the man on the stage and walked together, even wearing essentially the same garment but with a fit for women. Macho strength manifests itself into sexy power for women with their identity and femininity maintained, indeed strengthened. The collection, Bikkembergs (white label), inherits the very essence of ‘Dirk Bikkembergs’, with the same strength, character and performance. A parallel collection of timeless recognisable signature pieces defined through Dirk’s vision of cut and innovative use of fabrics. From the beginning it has never been perceived as a second line and it has a distinctive personality on its own. It is more relaxed and less designed. It is a more accessible collection of alternative, simplified, basic and technical pieces which are made to precise standards with attention to a quality finish and casual detail. The person who wears ‘Dirk Bikkembergs’ should also wear ‘Bikkembergs’. It is the same man. A ‘Bikkembergs’ t-shirt under a ‘Dirk Bikkembergs’ jacket. ‘Dirk Bikkembergs’ provides the roots and everything else branches out from there. In his red label dirk had spent much of the previous two years sculpting and diligently refining a pair of denims. The result is a pair of jeans that are strikingly human, in contrast with the irrevocably industrial feel of the last decade of denim. This human aspect has always been an obsession for jeans designers but somehow they always managed to miss the point: from stone washed to industrial-soiled, manufacturing has been aimed solely at recreating the ‘used’ quality, but the essence of a used pair of jeans can’t be copied. Dirk has given his jeans a body and soul, a skin and a history. Dirk has now made his message clear. By proving he can make innovative clothes in a uniquely structured shape. By being so assured with the man he wishes to dress, Dirk’s collections have always been strong, vivid and liberal, almost elaborate, but this creative generosity helped make his message clear, there was no water in the wine.