ach year the MoMu Fashion Museum presents a MoMu Award to a MA student at the Fashion Department of the Royal Academy in Antwerp. This award, to be presented during the jury proclamation in June, gives a single student the opportunity to present his or her collection in an exhibition at the MoMu Gallery. The MoMu Award is for a student whose course of study at the Royal Academy has been exceptionally motivating and whose work stands out in unique visual language. We are very proud to announce that the MoMu Award 2013 goes to Pierre Renaux!

Pierre Renaux was already thinking about his post-Academy future at the start of this collection, realizing this would be the ‘last time’ (at least for a while) where he could decide on every aspect of a collection by himself.

This brought him both anxiety and relief, because he knew he’d have to make a ‘tabula rasa’ when graduating from the academy, maybe even ultimately dissolving himself as a designer. Anticipating this scenario resulted in the ‘clearance sale’ or ‘everything must go’ principle, translated into a womenswear collection that shows garments that are in the middle of being ruined and/or dissolved.
At the basis is a businesswoman’s attire, the image of a cold, godlike, controlled woman, ‘the last woman standing’ of a company, a CEO who had to fight in order to say what she wanted to say, and who wears suits as rigid, armour-like garments. It is contemporary formal attire with a twist: the synthetic materials (neoprene, wax, plastic) are being distorted, twisted and appear to be melting or seem to consist of glass shards. They are mutating. Each silhouette contains the tension between a kind of cold-heartedness and more sensual shapes, between strength and softness. The woman is being protected against her environment by clothes that are both body-hugging and yet dissolving. Pierre Renaux doesn’t see this collection as a pessimistic statement about his own future, but rather as a realistic exercise through which he creates new, coincidental energy, in which he loses control in order to create space for something new to follow.
The tantalizing, futuristic shoes, are 3D-printed in Belgium, a première for the Antwerp catwalk!

MOMU AWARD 2013 Pierre Renaux
Liquidation Totale
From June 19th to August 11th at the MoMu Gallery
Free admission