Анн Демелёместер: Возвращение дизайнера и трансформация бренда.

Belgian fashion designer (born 1959)

Ann Verhelst (born 29 December 1959), known professionally as Ann Demeulemeester, is a Belgian fashion designer whose label, Ann Demeulemeester, is mainly showcased at the annual Paris Fashion Week. She is known as one of the Antwerp Six in the fashion industry. to Albert and Monique Verhelst Pappijn, and later lived in the city of Antwerp. The reason why she made the decision to change her real name "Verhelst" to "Demeulemeester" remains unknown. Initially, Verhelst showed no interest in fashion. She attended art school for three years, where she discovered her fascination with people and portraiture, which led her to begin thinking about clothing design. This group of Belgian designers would soon be known as the 'Antwerp Six', a radical and distinctive Belgian group of designers of the 1980s. Verhelst struggled to find a first job and began working as a freelance pattern maker, assisting fashion icon Martin Margiela
, for an undisclosed Italian brand for a few years.

After leaving fashion, Verhelst attended porcelain master classes in England and France. In 2019, she launched Ann Demeulemeester Serax in collaboration with Belgian diffusion label Serax, a collection of affordable porcelain dinner services made in China, but also silverware, glasses and larger houseware, following the path of other famous fashion designers of the like of Inès de la Fressange, José Levy or Christian Lacroix.

After the Italian retailer Claudio Antonioli bought the company in 2020 and after the resignation of Sébastien Meunier, Ann Verhelst announced, in September 2021, her return to the Ann Demeulemeester label, therefore forever linking her name and legacy to Claudio Antonioli, whose name is mainly associated with the rise of luxury streetwear. That same month, the brand's Antwerp flagship store reopened after a year of renovation, now being mostly focused on the Ann Demeulemeester by Serax homeware and furnitures collections rather than on the fashion collections, confirming the brand's smart transition from a "Fashion House" to a "Lifestyle Brand". In the meantime, Belgian national newspaper De Tijd revealed that 42 out of the 48 Antwerp based employees of Ann Demeulemeester had been dismissed, despite most of them have been working for the label for over 3 decades and were hired by Ann Verhelst herself. The article also revealed that the company itself was relocated to Milan, definitively cutting the fashion house from its historical Flemish roots. In an exclusive interview granted to journalist Jesse Brouns, Ann Verhelst, Patrick Robyn and Claudio Antonioli confirmed the relocation of the Belgian brand to Italy, the later stating that "Milan [compared to Antwerp] is a fashion city. That made recruiting a new team of 25 people easier." Claudio Antonioli enrolled designer Nina Maria Nitsche as "ghost" creative director of the brand, another Maison Margiela alumni, after her short stances at both Vetements and Kering's own Brioni. The brand's first fashion show under Antonioli era, which took place in October 2021 in Paris and relied mostly on denim, received mixed reviews from the international press. As for the second outing of Claudio Antonioli for the brand, in March 2022, Vogue described it, in a notably harsh review, as if "The models all looked like they were heading to a meeting with their bank managers to declare themselves bankrupt". For Sanremo Music Festival 2022, Ann Demeulemeester dressed Italian musician Mahmood, who joins the list of the brand's legends alongside Patti Smith and PJ Harvey. In December 2022, to the industry’s surprise, Claudio Antonioli named the social media savvy Ludovic de Saint Sernin as creative director of Ann Demeulemeester, just to part ways with him less than 6 months later and after one single collection. In June 2023, Antonioli then appointed as the brand’s fourth creative director in less than three years, Stefano Gallici, a former intern at Haider Ackermann and one half of a duo of Italian DJs called the Nausea Twins. In September 2023, Ann Verhelst and Claudio Antonioli released an exclusive fragrance designed by Italian nose, Nicola Bianchi. At the end of Italian fiscal year 2022, Ann Demeulemeester’s parent company, AD Milano S. R. L., reported a net loss of 10.555.311,00 euros for a total turnover of only 9.166.499,00 euros.

Verhelst married photographer Patrick Robyn in 1985. a 19th century Italian rococo revival villa situated in the village of Kessel, that she bought from Baroness Diane Caroline Van Zuylen Van Nyevel. In 2021, Ann Verhelst acquired the restaurant Euterpia in Antwerp’s historical district of Zurenborg, shortly after the previous owner, Marc Tombeur, died from Covid.