Ann Demeulemeester

Verhelst graduated from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in 1981,[6]. A year after her graduation, she won the Gouden Spoel, a Belgian awarded prize to the year's most promising fashion designer.[7] Verhelst began working as a freelance designer, assisting Martin Margiela for undisclosed Italian brands, for a few years.

In 1985, Verhelst finally launched her own brand, Ann Demeulemeester, in collaboration with her husband, Patrick Robyn, who decided to put an end to his burgeoning career as a photographer to devote himself to his wife's fashion label.[2][8] In 1996, she debuted her own menswear line.[6]

Verhelst was influenced by gothic, punk, and Japanese cult styles, and her clothing is popular among so-called "goth ninjas".[9]

She opened her first store in Antwerp in 1999.[2] [10]

Verhelst worked with the artist Jim Dine, and draws inspiration from singer Patti Smith.[11] She worked on a clothing line inspired by Jackson Pollock.[2]

In June 2013, her parent company 32 BVBA, which also housed designer Haider Ackermann, split into independent brands. In November 2013, Verhelst announced she was leaving the fashion house.[2] The exit letter also explained that the brand will show its autumn/winter 2014 men's and women's collection together at February's Paris Fashion Week.[12] Following her departure, Ann Verhelst choose herself the French designer Sébastien Meunier as her successor as artistic director of the brand. Sébastien Meunier had previously worked for 10 years with the Belgian fashion genius Martin Margiela before joining Ann Demeulemeester in 2010, officially for designing the house's men's collections while in reality being trained by Ann Verhelst and Patrick Robyn themselves to his future position of Artistic Director.

The Demeulemeester label "operates freestanding stores in Antwerp, Hong Kong and Tokyo, and wholesales to an array of international retailers including Saks Fifth Avenue and Barneys New York in America, L’Eclaireur and Le Bon Marché in Paris and Lane Crawford and Joyce in Hong Kong."[2]

After leaving fashion, Verhelst attended porcelain master classes in England and France. In 2019, she launched Ann Demeulemeester Serax, a collection of affordable porcelain dinner services hand-painted in China, but also silverware, glasses and larger houseware, following the path of other famous fashion designers who made this transition before like Inès de la Fressange, José Levy or Christian Lacroix[13]

After the Italian retailer Claudio Antonioli bought the company in 2020 [14] and after the departure of Sébastien Meunier,[15] Ann Verhelst announced, in September 2021, her return to the Ann Demeulemeester label,[16] 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,[17] drawing back to the minimalist aesthetic, originally conceived by the famed Belgian architects duo Robbrecht en Daem,[18] the store itself now being mostly focused on the Ann Demeulemeester 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".[19] In the meantime, Belgian national newspaper De Tijd revealed that 42 out of the 48 Antwerp-based employees of Ann Demeulemeester had been dismissed, while the company itself had been relocated to Milan,[20] 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."[21]

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.[22][23][24]