The 5th edition of Fashion Talks took place in the Antwerp Handelsbeurs, the world's oldest stock exchange, and also where the Antwerp six presented their first collections.

Despite corona, we still had the opportunity to bring together more than 600 fashion professionals for a stimulating MAIN STAGE and BREAKOUT programme. This time we had plenty of great speakers including Pieter Mulier, Jan-Jan Van Essche, Bertony Da Silva and Hannelore Knuts.

The day ended with the Belgian Fashion Awards ceremony.

2021 marked the 4th edition of the annual Belgian Fashion Awards ceremony. Flanders DC, MAD Brussels, Wallonie-Bruxelles Design Mode (WBDM), and Knack Weekend/ Le Vif Weekend once again joined forces to put established and emerging talent from the Belgian fashion industry in the spotlight.

These were the seven award winners: Lili Schreiber (Most Promising Graduate); Meryll Rogge (Emerging Talent of the Year); Benoit Bethume (Professional of the Year); Resortecs (Changemaker of the Year); Nicolas Di Felice (Designer of the Year); Imprevu (Fashion Brand of the Year); Walter Van Beirendonck (The Jury Prize).

Clare Press was one of our speakers. She is the journalist, author and filmmaker behind the sustainable fashion podcast Wardrobe Crisis, based on her book of the same name. She also co-hosts the UN’s Ethical Fashion podcast with Simone Cipriani. Formerly, Clare was the first ever Vogue sustainability editor.

André Pelgrims is creator of TAKING WING, a company focused on coaching other businesses, leaders and teams. He wants to give people wings, power to teams and sustainable entrepreneurship are his main goals. André also wrote “Dansen naar vrijheid”. For Fashion Talks, André Pelgrims has talked on our main stage about 'The road to courageous leadership'.

We had a debate about profit, doubt and what we leave behind, which was moderated by Anja Aronowsky with Jan-Jan Van Essche, Vanessa Bruno & Laura Larbalestier.

Bertony Da Silva started in 2009 an experimental capsule T-shirt collection that unified different art forms into garments emerged as Arte Antwerp's first creation, shaping the distinctly hybridized vision from day one. Arte Antwerp matured into a cultivated creative house, proving its relevance by translating artistic and timely concepts into ready-to-wear collections. For Fashion Talks he went into conversation with Marie Guérin, the editor in chief of ELLE Belgique.

Shayli Harrison is an Antwerp Fashion Department alumna and the founder of Mutani, a digital fashion unitive that connects radical designers with their aesthetic equal in digital creation to produce digital fashion assets for wear in cyberspace. Muchaneta Kapfunde is the founder and editor in chief of FashNerd.com, a digital news site that focuses on the merger of fashion with technology. Currently considered one of the leading influencers speaking and writing about the merger of fashion with technology, Muchaneta is also a contributor at Vogue Business and a senior contributor at The Interline.