I’ve known Atelier Solarshop on Dambruggestraat 48 in the centre of Antwerp for a long time, and I visit it often because of the quality coffee in its café. It was all the more pleasant to learn that the work of its co-owner with an unusual tautology in his double name Jan-Jan Van Essche has become the subject of a separate exhibition at the MoMu Fashion Museum.
The clothes of the Antwerp Fashion Academy graduate (2003) are not only a perfect example of street fashion, but also ideal for the Belgian weather, which is changeable N-number of times a day. It is as layered as a Belgian cabbage. Jan-Jan moves away (but only one step) from traditional European clothes that constrain our bodies in favour of an oriental, spacious dynamic. He creates clothes whose shape is determined by the body! But it doesn’t make you look like a yogi or a stranger – it allows you to walk the European streets in a cocoon of comfort, but not a foreigner.
The title of the show, Khayal, literally means ‘imagination’ in Urdu and is a classical Indian musical style based on improvisation. Its scenography is meditative and you go into a slight trance from the first step from its contemplation, making circles, or rather squares, in a light dance-like action. I personally walked around the mini-exhibition five times.
Of course, as a graduate of the Antwerp Fashion Academy, Jan-Jan is a great deconstructionist – both at the cutting and sewing stage. The fashion designer makes exhaustive use of natural fabrics of the most exotic origin:
A draped cape in white undyed eri silk is woven and spun by hand in Assam, India. A white Japanese poplin blouse is created from hemp cotton. The tunic inspired by the West African boubou bird was hand-woven in Antwerp by Lamine Diouf, a Senegalese weaver with whom Jan-Jan has been collaborating for many years. All khaki garments are made of cotton silk woven on a shuttle loom used until the 1950s. The grey-green fabric is chambray woven from two different natural shades of undyed old cotton, which has been reintroduced to the textile industry since the 1980s. The designer tries to use only natural dyes locally for production techniques. He travels all over the world in search of new fabrics, techniques and patterns. Over the years of travelling, Jan-Jan has developed his own language of patterns based on traditional clothing from different eras and places. The patterns are mostly straight lines made up of squares and rectangles. That is, they fit into European styles like avant-garde or art deco.
Jan-Jan Van Essche creates his layered silhouettes from different pieces of clothing that together tell a story. Playing with codes, volumes, textures and colours, he achieves a delicate balance.
