Like Martin Margiela and Ann Demeulemeester before her, Adam-Leenaerdt defies categorization.
The morning before the photo shoot for this story, which is taking place in Paris, Marie Adam-Leenaerdt is working at home in Schaerbeek, an attractive neighborhood in northeast Brussels, while a summer storm pummels the greenhouse roof in her garden downstairs. The window from her office overlooks it, and you can’t see anything but sideways rain.
“It’s the comfort of life here,” she says of Brussels, where she was born and raised. “It’s a city, but it feels like a village. It isn’t far from Paris or London. Here, you can have a house with a garden. I like gardening to clear my head. I like to cook and have friends over for dinner.” The 1920s home where she launched her brand, and keeps 15 varieties of heritage tomatoes, belongs to her parents, who live on the lower floors.
Adam-Leenaerdt graduated from La Cambre, a visual arts school in Brussels, in 2020 and launched her self-titled label at Paris Fashion Week in 2023. One of her professors, Tony Delcampe, remembers that even as a student, she was committed to working in fashion while maintaining a healthy personal life. “She’s very involved with arts, but also cooking and gardening,” he says. “That allows her to have distance from the fashion world.
Multifunctionality is central to many of Adam-Leenaerdt’s designs, both because she likes to resist categorization and because she wants to add value. She feels the need to justify the price of her clothes. “It’s important to make things that last and that have more than one use. You can wear the dresses in different ways and for different occasions; you can adjust the boots to different heights,” she says.
Among those who know her, there’s a consensus that Adam-Leenaerdt’s conceptual mind and dedication to craftsmanship, as well as her practicality, make her a fundamentally Belgian designer—an heir to the likes of Martin Margiela and Ann Demeulemeester. “In fashion,” Adam-Leenaerdt says, “you have to find a balance between belonging to the fashion world and having fun with it. I like things and people who don’t take themselves too seriously. I think that’s the Belgian way.
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