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The Antwerp Six is direct reference to a group of significant avant garde fashion designers who graduated from Antwerp’s Royal Academy of Fine Arts in period occurring between 1980-1981. At the Academy they learn tips and tricks of fashion designing from Linda Loppa. The fashion collective Antwerp shows a relatively different radical vision for fashion as happened at the time during the 1980s that firmed Antwerp as a notable location and recognized spot for fashion designing. The group started or came into limelight in 1988 as it rented a truck and set out for the London fashion fair with their collections. The group is consisted of the following fashion designers:

• Walter Van Beirendonck: He is a noted Belgian fashion designer born in year 1957. He graduated in 1980 from the Royal Arts Academy in Antwerp. Along with Dirk Van Saene, Dries van Noten, Ann Demeulemeester, Marina Yee (and Dirk Bikkembergs (graduated in 1982). He became the part of the Antwerp Six. Since 1983, he brings out his own collections of goods and he was rather inspired by the visual arts, literature, nature and ethnic influences. His remarkable color combinations and a strong graphic influence are features of his collections.

• Ann Demeulemeester: Ann Demeulemeester is a fashion designer whose eponymous label ‘Ann Demeulemeester’ is generally is being impressed upon as the annual Paris Fashion Week. She too without any exception learnt fashion design at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp as lying from period between from 1978 to 1981. Therefore, she is also kwon as a member of the ‘Antwerp Six’. She worked with the artist Jim Dine, and has also been associated with Patti Smith. At present she is working on a clothing line as inspire by Jackson Pollock.

• Dries van Noten: Dries Van Noten is a Belgian fashion designer and an eponymous fashion brand. In 2005, by the New York Times he was lauded as “one of fashion’s most cerebral designers”. His sort of fashion styling is known as to be the “eccentric”, and fell out of favor as on the long period of minimalistic fashion trend of the early 1990s, that revived as during the mid 2000s. He won the International Award of the Council of Fashion Designers of America in 2008.

• Dirk Bikkembergs: Dirk Bikkembergs was born in Cologne, Germany. He along with other Belgian designers like Ann Demeulemeester, Dries van Noten, Dirk van Saene, Walter van Beirendonck and Marina Yee was graduated in 1996. In 1996, the Bikkembergs label was came into force as a label considered as to and for the needs of the wider and elaborate market.

Other two famous fashion designers from the group was the Marina Yee and Dirk Van Saene.

Antwerpen-Centraal is the main railway station in the Belgian city of Antwerp. The station is controlled by the national railway company SNCB. The construction of the station building started from and occurred between the years 1895 and 1905 as a shifting activity of the original terminus of the Brussels-Mechelen-Antwerp Railway. The stone made terminus buildings along with the waiting room hall were designed by Louis Delacenserie and the vast (185 metres long and 44 metres high) iron and glass trainshed dome was fabricated by Clement van Bogaert. The viaduct into the station is another noticeable structure as made by the local architect Jan Van Asperen.

The station is presently has prestige of the best railway architecture of Europe. After the construction of the station it run successfully for many decades and was attributed and assigned for the Expansion of the high speed trains. The construction work for the high speed trains began in 1998. This full fledged construction was apart from accommodating it for high speed trains was also aimed for the converting the terminus into a full fledged station. There a new tunnel was excavated between Berchem station in the south of the city and Antwerpen-Dam station in the north, and was passing beneath the Central station, having two platforms at its two underground levels. This allows Thalys, HSL 4 and HSL-Zuid high-speed trains to travel through Antwerp Central without any requirement to move around. After the completion of the project, the train started running from the 25 March 2007.

For operational convenience after the high speed running the station was further expanded and was divided into the four levels. At its first level there is located the original station and about six terminating tracks as kept in the two groups and let to have a view of the lower levels. The next level that is the level 0 is there for the house ticketing facilities as well as commercial space. And the level 2 is underground with four tracks and there on two tracks goes underground into the city. For its architectural value the station is too famous in the popular culture as well. There a Flash mob sort event was too organized at the station about in early 2009 and it further developed into a viral video and themed the song Do-Re-Mi from the Rodgers Hammerstein musical The station also shown in Agatha_Christie’s_Poirot episode.

The Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp is one of the oldest Art Academy of its sort in Europe, the academy was constituted in 1663 by David Teniers the Younger, painter to the Archduke Leopold Wilhelm and Don Juan of Austria. Teniers was master of the Guild of St Luke that imbibed the arts and some handicraft and requisitioned the Philip IV of Spain, then master of the Spanish Netherlands, to provide a grant royal charter to found a fine arts academy in Antwerp.

The Royal Academy then after was developed into an internationally recognized and reputed institute of Fine Arts, Architecture and Design. Since the nineteenth century the academy is a favorite institute of young artists from outside including the Irish, German, Dutch and Polish artists going for a much classified and a solid classical training at on their way to Antwerp. Under the supervision of Gustave Wappers (1803-1874) and his registrar Hendrik Conscience the academy developed and restructured at its best level. The academy’s best art collection there was shown at its own gallery space.  By 1890 this gallery developed into the Royal Museum of Fine Arts and placed at its current location in Antwerp.

In 1880, a talented young artist Henry Van de Velde was enrolled into at the Antwerp Academy. There he became one of the pioneering 20th century architects and designers. In 1885 and 1886 Vincent Van Gogh too spent some of his time at the Antwerp academy, before he departed to the France. In 1885, King Leopold II constituted the National Higher Institute for Fine Arts Antwerp (Nationaal Hoger Instituut voor Schone Kunsten) as an extraordinary post graduate program, as inspired by the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris.

In due course in 20th century in 1946, the Architecture program developed into an independent institute, The National Higher Institute of Architecture. In 1963 in the institute the course of the Fashion Design started. The course was slightly successful from the very start. And was amazingly successful in early eighties with the “The Antwerp Six” along with Dirk Bikkembergs, Walter Van Beirendonck, Marina Yee, Dries Van Noten, Dirk Van Saene and Ann Demeulemeester and was much talked about in Media. The fashion program at the institute attracted as much as talents from all around the globe. It has about 130 students at its list as is the largest program in the visual arts and design department.

Nowadays, The Academy provides three distinctive programs like as Visual Arts and Design, Conservation studies and a one year dedicated teachers training. About 540 students there work in the four main buildings situated in the center of the city, Mutsaardstraat, Silversmithing, Jewelry, Theatre Costume Design and Fine Arts, Nationale Strata and Keizerstraat.