Veronique Branquinho’s Icing on the Cake

In the words of Sebastian Love from Little Britain "Oooh man, I love the cake!"…

…well, you would love the cake if it was printed with images from the new A Magazine, curated by Veronique Branquinho who celebrates 10 years in the fashion business this year.  As the president over this year’s Arts of Fashion competition in Miami, Veronique Branquinho was invited out there and I had the pleasure of meeting her.  She was feted with a very Miami-style reception at a trendy bar (the usage of trendy in this case is not so much positive as the bar was a little on the over-precious side… I got the impression, Veronique would have had a far better time at a more intimate and down-to-earth venue…) and also in a showy style, ten of the Miami Uni students came parading out each holding an A4 sized cake, printed on with images from the magazine, lighted with a single candle.
Needless to say, there was a lot of leftover cake… I scoffed a bit… delicious… made more so by the imprinted images perhaps?

Of course, I can’t be banging on about the effing cake when there’s Branquinho’s contribution to fashion to be talked about.  After hearing Ann Claes, who is responsible for the marketing at Veronique Branquinho talk a little about how a young designer makes herself known at the conferences (which I followed with a very horrific discussion about fashion blogs…), it is clear that Branquinho’s work speaks for itself rather without the help of any clever marketing strategies.  The one store in Antwerp, select stockists, catwalk shows that are discreet as opposed to attention-grabbing and clothes that remain in people’s wardrobes for a longer length of time than one season.  These are all familiar traits of Antwerp-based designers that aren’t after limelight and if they are, they want the light to be shining on their work as opposed to the face and the persona of the designer.  Clicking through the images of 10 years worth of collections from both womens and menswear, there is change, there is experimentation but never veering too far away from what Branquinho has in mind for her ideal women and men.  Elegance and quiet beauty is what people normally associate with Branquinho’s clothes but when you look at her backcatalogue of work, she seems to explore an array of facets and styles to a great degree of success because she never takes the exploration to extreme degrees.

Notes about said magazine which we were consuming heavily (both through the cake and reading the magazine…): I get feverishly excited about the arrival of every issue of A magazine with past curators including Martine Sitbon, Yohji Yamamoto and Martin Margiela, only because each issue is like a scrapbook of the designers’ head.  The artists, photographers, music and films they enjoy.  How they personally wish to see their collections presented as opposed to how another stylist/photographer interprets them.  So Veronique likes a sophisticated man tinged with nostalgia wearing her menswear…

She likes Serkan Cuba and Romain Brau masks…

Women wandering lost in the woodlands is a recurring image…

Her parents’ house is filled with the kitschiest collection of nick nacks and she has an admiration for Tim Burton…