Walter Van Beirendonck Teams Up with House of Liza and Farfetch to Sell Special Archive Pieces

Vintage clothing, which speaks to our current collective interests in sustainability and individuality, is becoming big business—and not only in the womenswear arena. Drops of limited edition merch have not only given birth to the idea of the hypebeast and gamified shopping, but also primed the menswear market for a vintage renaissance. Helping this trend along is House of Liza, a London-based fashion archive, who has partnered with Farfetch to curate a collection of unique pieces from Walter Van Beirendonck’s personal holdings, dating from the 1990s to today.

Walter Van Beirendonck Teams Up with House of Liza and FarFetch to Sell Special Archive Pieces

“It is the first time that I have allowed a ‘buyer’ into my archive,” noted Van Beirendonck, who told Vogue he only parted with pieces he had doubles of, “or which were not part of complete show looks.” Expect to be increasingly tempted by similar sales: “We’re drawn to the fact that [these kinds of offerings] are a totally sustainable way of shopping: we’re not producing anything new, we’re offering our customers the chance to buy original garments,” said Rob Nowill, Farfetch’s Deputy Editor. “That’s massively appealing to our audience right now. Plus, our customers really respond to the exclusivity of reissued pieces—if you buy one of these archival items, it’s very unlikely you’ll ever meet anyone with the same piece. For me, at least, that’s pretty exciting.”

This sale lands at the tail end of the Spring 2020 men’s season, one of the most anticipated in recent memory as fashion’s attention is increasingly focused on this category. What’s behind this uptick in interest? “The appetite for progressive menswear has always existed,” observed Nowill. “I think what’s changed is that designers are increasingly emboldened to experiment—thanks to Instagram and online retail, designers can find an audience for even the most boundary-pushing pieces. It feels, to me, like menswear has gotten fun again. There’s more color, more humor, more optimism and, of course, those have been the codes of Walter’s collections since he began. His work is so profoundly political—it touches on everything from the environment to gay rights. He’s a designer who has always used his clothes as a medium for expression. We need more of that in fashion.” The appeal of menswear to Van Beirendonck is quite straightforward; he’s always found it “more challenging than women’s wear,” because “the boundaries are more defined and therefore it is more adventurous as a designer to work on it, and try to push things forward.”

There are many ways towards advancement, and not all of them take the form of a straight line. Mainstream Van Beirendonck is not—see his bondage-inspired pieces; slogans like “Lust Never Sleeps;” and his penchant for a sort of Pop-psychedelia. But upstanding he is. “Working in an ethical way is very important,” he said, as is “keeping up creativity and freedom, staying independent and free. I’m proud that I kept on going, despite everything, and I’m proud that I have my outsider position, in the stormy fashion world.”

Van Beirendonck entered into that world as part of the now legendary Antwerp Six—a group of grads from the city’s Royal Academy of Fine Arts who, in 1986, rented a van and brought their wares to London, where they inadvertently introduced Flemish design to the fashion world. “It was fantastic to stick together, to unite our power and have more impact that way, and to conquer the fashion world, completely innocently,” noted the designer. Theirs always was a loose affiliation; all were taught by Linda Loppa, but there was no mistaking the romanticism of Dries Van Noten for the Gothic leanings of Ann Demeuelemeester, say. Among “les Six,” the work of Van Beirendonck (who first designed under the label Wild and Lethal Trash), always been the most extroverted, the most colorful, and the most political. It’s comes as no surprise then that the designer told Vogue that he came to fashion through: “David Bowie/glam rock.” Other drivers included “gender expressions/creativity and the urge for drawing/the fantasy world I created as an outsider in boarding school.”

Though he prefers to keep a certain distance from the fashion system, as the director of the fashion course at his alma mater, Van Beirendonck’s ethos has long been communicated to the designers creating the future of fashion. In 1990 Van Beirendonck brought his then-intern Raf Simons to his first Paris fashion show, after which Simons decided to become a designer. (NB: Among the pieces that will be sold through Farfetch are some from the collections Simons worked on.) Van Beirendonck has also been supporting the work of his colleagues by selling their wares in his DVS Boutique.

It’s safe to say that this is a designer who looks at the industry from many different angles. Van Beirendonck says he’s watched it change in positive and negative ways. “I’m shocked at how price-battles and fast fashion shook up the fashion world, and how overproduction of garments and bad working conditions are part of this fashion world,” he noted. “The biggest change I think is the way communication evolved; the internet has sped up the way we look at fashion.”

Reviewing Van Beirendonck’s aesthetic through the House of Liza x Farfetch collection, it’s easy to pick out signature themes and motifs, like an overt sexiness, color and pattern, an interest in futurism, and messaging, which he renders “less heavy” through the use of humor and irony. For example, Van Beirendonck regularly plays with his own distinctive (and sometimes naked) silhouette as a motif. Like Karl Lagerfeld’s dark glasses and ponytail, it has become rather iconic. We suggest you ask not “Where’s Waldo?” but “Where’s Walter?” as you peruse this collection of archive pieces.

Originally Appeared on Vogue