In 1986 Geert Bruloot opened a shop in Antwerp called Louis that sold nothing but Belgian designers. The same year a group of young graduates of the city’s Academy showed at the British Designer Show in London, on the second floor, in a poor spot; the international press only arrived on the second day, and Barneys bought several collections. They became known as the Antwerp Six. This list covers the designer and independent shops worth the walk now, checked address by address in November 2026, with a note at the end on the ones that have gone.

Louis

Bruloot’s shop at Lombardenstraat 2 is where the story starts. Louis showed Ann Demeulemeester‘s first collection, and it later held distribution deals with Martin Margiela and with Dior under Raf Simons, Monocle reported in 2014. The rails are no longer only Belgian: in 2022 FashionUnited listed Balenciaga, Comme des Garçons, Acne Studios, Loewe, Rick Owens and Jil Sander beside Ann Demeulemeester. The magazine COEVAL, interviewing Bruloot in 2026, called him the curator and retailer who helped bring the Six to the international stage.

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Het Modepaleis

Dries Van Noten, one of the Six, bought the art nouveau building at Nationalestraat 16, on the corner with the Kammenstraat, in 1989 and made it his flagship: five storeys of his own label under the name Het Modepaleis, the fashion palace. The label’s creative direction has since passed to Julian Klausner, and the shop is still where it was. A travel writer for Daily Sabah, writing in April 2026, told readers to go in “even if you just want to browse”.

Ann Demeulemeester

Demeulemeester’s own shop is in the Zuid. It has been renovated under the supervision of Patrick Robyn, and the Style Zeitgeist shopping guide’s 2025 edition found her clothing there alongside the tableware she designs for the Belgian homeware company Serax.

Graanmarkt 13

Ilse Cornelissens and Tim Van Geloven moved from Amsterdam and opened Graanmarkt 13 around 2010 in a 19th-century town house on a cobbled square, at the address that gives it its name. The architect Vincent Van Duysen designed it and kept the creaks and scuffs. It has a restaurant, a gallery and, since 2014, a guest flat called The Apartment. More than half the brands are Belgian, among them Sofie D’Hoore, Bernadette and the objects of Michaël Verheyden, with Auralee from Japan. By 2017 the shop had dropped Marni and Isabel Marant for labels with more sustainable practices, though Cornelissens told Elle that “it is certainly not the case that we now only sell eco-labels”.

Labels Inc

Since 2002 Labels Inc has sold pre-owned designer clothes, shoes and accessories from recent collections, along with one-off pieces and catwalk samples that come directly from fashion houses, designers and collectors. The names on the labels run from Ann Demeulemeester, Dries Van Noten, A.F. Vandevorst and Raf Simons to Balenciaga, Dior and Comme des Garçons, with early pieces by the Six in its online archive. The shop is at Nationalestraat 95, not on the Kloosterstraat, as an earlier version of this list had it. Each month its windows show a different graduate collection from the fashion department of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts.

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That window is the best idea on this list. A second-hand shop that hands its street frontage to a student every month does more for the next generation of Antwerp designers than any flagship, and it costs the shop nothing but the space.

The MoMu shop

On the same street, at number 28, the ModeNatie building houses both the fashion department of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts and MoMu, the city’s fashion museum. The museum shop sells coffee-table books, accessories by local designers and small art objects. Daily Sabah’s writer said in April 2026 that they are hard to find anywhere else.

Christian Wijnants

Christian Wijnants, a graduate of the Academy, has his shop at Steenhouwersvest 36, on a street the city has recently pedestrianised. Andreas Bozarth Fornell designed the interior on a theme of natural against artificial, with walls of concrete and fibreglass and a quiet alcove that looks out on a garden. It opens from Monday to Saturday, 10:30 to 18:00, and on the first Sunday of the month from 13:00 to 17:00.

Vier

Bob Follens and Giancarlo Angeletti started Vier in October 2010 as a skate shop. “We wanted to do something out of our love for good products,” Follens told Monocle in 2014, “not making money.” In 2021 they left the Kammenstraat for Theodoor Van Rijswijckplaats 4, a two-floor space about five times bigger. The mix is up-and-coming streetwear and high-end designer clothes, Rassvet and Casablanca beside Dries Van Noten and Walter Van Beirendonck, plus T-shirts and sweatshirts under their own label and, since the move, natural wine.

St. Vincents

An earlier version of this list put Christian Wijnants and Margaret Howell on the rails at St. Vincents. It is not that kind of shop. It opened in December 2015 in a former printing office at Kleine Markt 13 and sells goods for the home, the wardrobe and the office: furniture, ceramics, bags and clothing, with a café and a programme of exhibitions and pop-ups. The Style Zeitgeist guide still listed it in 2025 as one of the city’s interior stores.

Thomas Haarmann

The German-born designer Thomas Haarmann founded Magazyn in 2008, moved it to the Steenhouwersvest in 2012, near the fashion museum, and now trades under his own name. He sells a small selection of ceramics, accessories and furniture, most of it made by hand by craftsmen working in traditional ways. “People from abroad are always pleasantly surprised by what’s on offer,” he told Monocle in 2014.

What has gone

Two shops from the earlier list have closed. Coccodrillo, the shoe shop Bruloot founded with Eddy Michiels, which helped launch Martin Margiela and gave an annual award to the Academy’s graduates, closed in 2019 after 36 years and a move to Arenbergstraat 2 in 2017. Its founders blamed overproduction, discounting, online retailers and long roadworks outside the door; Colette in Paris had closed two years earlier, after twenty. Espoo, the Scandinavian design shop on the Kloosterstraat, Antwerp’s antiques street, closed on 31 October 2026 after seventeen years. A shop called A Cut Above and a menswear shop called Maison M. in Zurenborg could not be found at all, so they are not here.

Louis opened in 1986 to sell only Belgian designers. Forty years on, it sells Balenciaga as well.