For which concept stor to walk in Antwerp
Antwerp - the city is charming, but tiny. You should not go here for a week, only if you choose its transit point between Paris and Amsterdam (trains in both directions go in two hours). But to live here for three days - go around the old streets, eat Belgian waffles and grab a Dries Van Noten suit for 100 euros and a 50-year-old Ann Demeulemeester dress. And better a couple of times a year. Wonderzine fashion editor Margarita Zubatova chose seven interesting concept stores that you need to visit in Antwerp.
Princess for most Belgians was a shop where you can go and get dressed as a family once a month, and the next grandmother will say: "These are decent and intelligent people, I saw them in Princess." Now the same owner has opened a less traditional, but more hype store - Renaissance. Here you can buy Acne T-shirts, crazy Peter Pilotto dresses, lacquer skirts Jonathan Saunders, as well as books and niche perfumes. Conveniently, Renaissance is located in the same building as the fashion museum.
In Louis, we go along with the store's employees, delivering dresses on the rail with the only featured Raf Simons collection for Dior. Pleasant consultant guy jokes that next to them it is better not to breathe. Other brands are no less reverent here: Louis represents the best select Maison Martin Margiela, Balenciaga and Dries Van Noten.
Seven Rooms opened just a couple of months ago, and so far very few people know about it. Nevertheless, past the large gallery premises, where you can simultaneously buy a coat of J.W. Anderson, a multi-colored glass luminaire or a designer frying pan, is difficult to penetrate. Charming consultant girl Hedy says: "We wanted to create a space in which you can come just like that, sit on this sofa (a very cool sofa. - Note ed.), read a magazine or drink coffee, which we will happily pour. Rested - and went to watch things between rails; you want - sat back and drank another cup. Here we will not hang over the soul and persuade: "And look at this as well." You decide how to spend your time. "
In a large space Graanmarkt 13 is a small gallery, restaurant and shop. In the latter, as usual, you can find everything: ethnic figurines, Isabel Marant dresses and Francis Kurkdjian perfume. Things of local designers (not so replicated, but worthy of attention) - for example, Lutz or Stephanie Schneider, here too. After it is worth going to the flower shop Baltimore opposite. Raf Simons orders flowers for the Parisian Dior show from here, of which the locals are very proud.
One of the first places to go in Antwerp, if the budget is running out, and you want to buy the favorite Belgian designers. Rosier 41 is an outlet, second-hand and just a place where you want to buy everything at once. It seems that more successful ideas - selling timeless things Ann Demeulemeester, Maison Martin Margiela and Raf Simons at Zara prices - could not be. For example, Dries Van Noten: a skirt - 60 euros, a dress in a floor - 40 euros, a top - 20 euros. Well, you understand.
Labels Inc. - the main competitor of Rosier 41, but the assortment in it is smaller, is updated less frequently, and everything costs a little more expensive. Nevertheless, here you can find classic sandals A.F. Vandevorst for 120 euros and a crazy jacket Walter Van Beirendonck - for 90. In addition to the Belgian designers Labels Inc. for example, it is importing the Japanese Comme des Garçons: the owner has purchased a whole collection of vintage shirts from the Shirt line.
In search of the Ra 13 store, I walked three or three times, until I saw a tiny sign on the gray wall on the way to the hotel. If you go deep into the courtyard, go up to the third floor and look to the right - you will find it, the most interesting concept store of Antwerp, which, apparently, does not at all aspire to world-wide fame. Here you can find Sibling sweatpants, a KTZ plaid shirt, and some crazy things designers with unpronounceable names - many of them just graduated from the Antwerp Academy of Fine Arts. In Ra13, by the way, there are great sales: you can find a Meadham Kirchhoff T-shirt for 30 euros and Gareth Pugh shoes for 200.