Stylized raven logo

Wal

"Why is a raven like a writing desk?"

ter

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Don’t answer.

Just enter.

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Fall.

Falling.

Falling down.

Falling down the rabbit hole.

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Soon you begin to wonder...

“What is happening?”

Wh- What.. the...

The Mad Hatter asks this question in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, not because he expects an answer, but because the riddle itself disrupts logic. No one has been able to solve it. Or has anyone?

More than a century later, Belgian fashion designer Walter Van Beirendonck chose this unanswered question as the title of his Summer 2017 collection.

Learn more ↗
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"Walter who?"

Walter Van Beirendonck is known for creating radical, immersive worlds for his collections. His work sits somewhere between fashion, performance, and visual storytelling. It challenges what clothing can be, who it is for, and how it should be understood.

You don’t enter Walter’s mind through explanation. You enter through disorientation. Like Alice, you fall - away from logic, away from certainty...

...into a world where meaning behaves differently.

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To find out more, you first need to understand

Not your typical fashion

The beginning

From the beginning, Walter positioned himself outside the mainstream of fashion. While others focused on wearability and elegance, his work leaned towards provocation, storytelling, and visual impact. His collections often resemble theatrical performances, unlike traditional runway shows.

Walter rejects the idea that fashion should be subtle, polite, or easy to consume on purpose. His work resists familiar stereotypes, inviting the viewer to question what they expect clothing and bodies to look like.

Fashion is not a product. It is a medium.

Throughout interviews and exhibitions, Walter Van Beirendonck has consistently emphasised that his work begins with ideas, rather than just following trends. He uses fashion as a tool to question social norms, identity, sexuality, power, and beauty.

In the 1980s and 90s, when the fashion world was still largely restrained, Walter used latex masks, exaggerated silhouettes, fetish references, and saturated colors. These were actually deliberate strategies to expand what fashion could express.

His way of doing things

Understanding Walter

Rather than guiding the viewer toward one correct interpretation, his work creates space for multiple readings. Symbols are layered, references collide, and visual excess replaces subtlety. This approach aligns closely with surrealist and science-fiction traditions, where logic bends and imagination takes control.

“I am a storyteller and it is my way of thinking and

and presenting a global vision.”

After reaching the bottom of the hole you see this lock

Unlock the door using the key.

Beyond this point you enter another world.

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Welcome to Walter’s world

Learn how to read his work

Get ready to

I'm down
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One of a kind visuals

Find out about his

Walter Van Beirendonck’s world does not follow everyday rules. The fashion is also not meant to flatter, normalise, or simplify. In reality, bodies are transformed, identities are exaggerated, and his unmistakable visual language becomes symbolic.

  • Masks

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    Faces are often obscured, altered, or replaced in Walter’s collections through masks or makeup. These gestures shift attention away from individual identity and more towards emotion and presence.

    By hiding or transforming the face, Walter questions how identity is constructed and perceived. The viewer is confronted with uncertainty and meaning is no longer fixed, but open to interpretation.

  • Colors

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    Color plays a central role in the designer’s visual language. His palettes are bold, clashing, and intense on purpose. They are never neutral, nor subtle.

    Walter treats color as a form of communication. Bright hues, contrasts, and interesting combinations create can create responses that trigger all sorts of emotions. By combining all of these elements, color becomes a tool to pull the viewer into his world, even before stereotypical expectations form.

  • Silhouettes

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    Walter consistently challenges conventional ideas of how bodies should look in fashion. His silhouettes exaggerate proportions, distort anatomy, and differ from standards.

    By working with unconventional norms and diverse bodies, he rejects narrow ideals of beauty and masculinity. The body becomes a site of experimentation and expression and not of correction or idealisation. Therefore, clothing does not adapt to the body, as the body exists in an unique way.

  • Graphics

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    Graphics are the structure of the fashion connoisseur’s work. Bold typography, graphic prints, symbols, and patterns appear across entire collections and runway shows.

    Influenced by comics, science fiction, political imagery, and pop culture, these elements turn fashion shows into immersive visual experiences. Typography becomes a voice, prints become narratives, and set design completes the scene and transforms each show into its own world.

How well do you remember Walter’s style?

So...

Pick the right “fruits” from the tree and place them in the cart.

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Rejection of “normal beauty”

The Crucial take

One of the most vital aspects of Walter’s work is his rejection of standardised beauty. His runway shows feature diverse bodies of all ages and looks. Muscular bodybuilders appear alongside fragile figures. Exaggerated masculinity coexists with vulnerability and softness.

In this way, Walter challenges deeply ingrained ideas about stereotypes in fashion. In his mind, beauty is expressive and confrontational, as well as personal, instead of being linear or symmetrical.

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“I stick to my

own personality, style and ideas.”

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What is going on inside his mind?

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  • Fantasy

    Walter Van Beirendonck builds worlds that feel like utopia, yet deeply connected to reality. His collections imagine alternative futures - playful, unsettling, or speculative. These are not escapist fantasies, but visions that question where society might be heading, and who gets to belong in those futures.

  • Politics

    Politics run quietly, but sometimes loudly, throughout Walter’s work. He responds to systems of power and control, often by exaggerating them. His clothing becomes a form of visual resistance, challenging dominant norms around masculinity, authority, and social order.

  • Sexuality

    Sexuality in Walter’s work is fluid, explicit, and confrontational. He rejects traditional gender roles and normative ideals of the body, using fetish, latex, masks, and exposure to reclaim desire as something personal and not ordered. The clothing allows identity to be explored rather than defined.

  • Fear

    Fear appears as both subject and atmosphere. It is reflected in anxieties about illness, surveillance, violence, and social exclusion - themes that have marked decades of this practice. Rather than hiding fear, he amplifies it, forcing the viewer to confront what is often left unspoken.

  • Humour

    The designer’s humour is very prominent. His work often appears playful, absurd, or even cartoonish, but this humour is never innocent. It removes expectations, making difficult themes more accessible while also expressing their seriousness.

How do we solve the riddle?

The solution

You can try putting the puzzle together...

Why

is a

raven

like a

writing

desk

The "answer"

The riddle is actually not meant to be solved.

Instead, it is a metaphor for his creative process, which doesn’t consist of clarity and fixed meanings. It asks you, the viewer, to stop searching for logic, but to start engaging emotionally and intuitively.

Meaning is not given to you. It can emerge through feeling, confrontation, and reflection. Therefore, the value of his work lies in how it makes you think, feel, and respond.

Art that belongs in a museum

Walter Van Beirendonck’s work is prominent at MoMu as it embodies the museum’s belief that fashion is more than clothing. His collections are reflections of their time - both challenging and complex, as well as offering deep meaning.

By preserving, studying, and sharing this work, MoMu invites visitors to engage with fashion as a way of thinking about everything around us. It is that way that we can learn more about what is going on inside the minds of other great artists and how their work influences the world.

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Feeling the need for more inspiration?

Write a letter to Walter Van Beirendonck and receive a reply from him immediately! He will give you more information and tips to feel more inspired.

  Dear Walter,

   I experienced your world through a simple, but illogical question. Along the way, I got to know you and your unique style.

I didn’t understand at first, but your work actually made me slow down and accept uncertainty as part of the process of feeling the meaning.

I feel very inspired by your work and I am very curious if you have a source of inspiration to help me begin my fashion journey.

Thank you for creating artworks that start conversations and make you think of the bigger picture.

Best wishes,

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Hi _____!
Thank you for all the kind words! If you ever need any kind of inspiration, you can check out my website or MoMu’s, as they have a lot of information on everything fashion.

Walter's site MoMu's site

“…to remain flexible,

the key is to see within ourselves…”

Check out the next story

Or...?

Every two months, MoMu will publish a new one-pager that explores a single designer, collection, or theme in depth. This story is the first chapter of the new MoMu series.

Each story stands on its own, with a distinct visual language and narrative structure that reflects its subject. We invite you to look at the next chapter and it may even give you some motivation!

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