Marina Yee – the most “little-known” member of the world-famous Antwerp Six – not for any lack of God-given talent. A girl who grew up in Congo, where her father worked as a colonial official, she showed an early gift for drawing and for altering clothes. Her family returned to Belgium when she was fifteen. Yet fate granted her the shortest path of the six (may they all be blessed with good health). I was once fortunate enough to see her at the graduate show of the fashion department at the Royal Academy of Visual Arts in The Hague, where she taught for several years. There was nothing of a star about her – just a stylish woman who consistently avoided the attention of the press and the glare of the spotlight. This was not a calculated marketing strategy, as with the “Antwerp+” figure Martin Margiela, with whom she moved to Paris in 1988. She remained an enigma.

I came closer to understanding her through an intimate exhibition – just a single room, yet a remarkable one – at Sofie Van De Velde Gallery, in my view one of the finest galleries in Antwerp, thanks to its owner (a strikingly beautiful woman who favours clothing by another member of “The Antwerp Six”, Dirk Van Saene). Sofie interviewed Marina Yee a week before her passing from cancer on 1 November 2025, after a long struggle with the illness. You sit in a vintage leather armchair from the era when Antwerp’s young designers first rose to prominence, as if visiting Yee in her own home. You watch footage filmed there, hear her voice worn down by illness, and it feels like a confession. She speaks of her life, her views, her creative process. You are surrounded by her collages, drawings, bricolage works and sketches. A quiet sadness settles in – the loss of a talent who still had so much more to give.

A commemorative project – subtle, filled with admiration for her work and her way of thinking. It helped me grasp the human phenomenon of Marina Yee, who spent her life balancing between fashion design and artistic practice, increasingly leaning towards the latter. More an artist than a designer – or rather, an artist within design. She worked extensively with recycling long before it became fashionable, had a deep appreciation for second-hand clothing, and was perhaps the greatest deconstructionist among the six. She was also the closest of them to the Japanese designers Rei Kawakubo and Yohji Yamamoto, who so powerfully influenced “The Antwerp Six”, and to the Japanese philosophy of wabi-sabi, with its reverence for naturalness, asymmetry, age, and imperfection. As she aptly put it, she was never interested in “ready-made”, but rather in “ready-kapot” – damaged garments, burnt, frayed, worn at the edges.

The exhibition runs until 10 May 2026 at Sofie Van De Velde Gallery.