Maggy Baum

Last updated

Maggy Baum (born 22 August 1931) was a Belgian designer, knitwear- and textiles specialist, whose knitwear collection was sold internationally in the 70s and 80s, leading her to be recognized as a pioneer in Belgian fashion. [1] She also taught at La Cambre, the fashion school in Brussels, and published a textiles encyclopedia.

Contents

Biography and career

Baum was born on 22 August 1931 in Verviers, a municipality located in the Belgian province of Liège known for its historic textile industry until the first half of the 20th century. [2] Baum is retired and lives in Brussels.

Design and consulting

Baum started her career at the end of the 1950s, when she bought a knitwear production atelier in Brussels. At the time, the Belgian fashion industry consisted of small, family-owned businesses specialized in practical garments. For a woman to launch her own brand and atelier was an exception. [1] Her technical knowhow landed her various consulting positions. She worked with international fashion brands, such as Woolmark and designing for smaller confectionary labels such as Edel, Tat’s, Faber en Mantex. [3] [4]

Baum also produced a small line of knitwear ensembles. By 1978, her “casual jersey fashion” was sold in Amsterdam, Paris, Berlin, New York and Japan. [5] On being a woman in fashion, Maggy said: “What is important is that no one imposes a style on women anymore, they’re free to choose what they wear and how they wear it.” [3]

Baum has been credited with inventing “demnit”, a procedure that makes it possible to knit with denim-threads. [5]

Teaching and writing

At a later stage in her career, Baum became a teacher at Brussels fashion school La Cambre, where she taught Paris-based designer Olivier Theyskens and current head of the fashion school Tony Delcampe, amongst many others.

In 2008, Baum co-wrote Passepoil, Piqûres et Paillettes together with colour- and fibre specialist Chantal Boyeldieu-Duyck. [6] The publication is an encyclopedic dictionary defining over 8.000 terms from the textile industry. It took seven years to write. [7]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fashion</span> Stylish clothing

Fashion is a term used interchangeably to describe the creation of clothing, footwear, accessories, cosmetics, and jewellery of different cultural aesthetics and their mix and match into outfits that depict distinctive ways of dressing as signifiers of social status, self-expression, and group belonging. As a multifaceted term, fashion describes an industry, styles, aesthetics, and trends.

Heidemarie Jiline "Jil" Sander is a German minimalist fashion designer and the founder of the Jil Sander fashion house.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sonia Rykiel</span> French fashion designer and writer

Sonia Rykiel was a French fashion designer and writer. She created the Poor Boy Sweater, which was featured on the cover of French Elle magazine. Her knitwear designs and new fashion techniques led her to be dubbed the "Queen of Knits". The Sonia Rykiel label was founded in 1968, upon the opening of her first store, making clothing, accessories, and fragrances. Rykiel was also a writer, and her first book was published in 1979. In 2012, Rykiel revealed that she was suffering from Parkinson's disease. She died from complications of the disease on 25 August 2016.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Viktor & Rolf</span> Dutch fashion house

Viktor & Rolf is a Dutch avant-garde luxury fashion house founded in 1993 by Viktor Horsting and Rolf Snoeren. For more than twenty years, Viktor & Rolf have sought to challenge preconceptions of fashion and bridge the divide between fashion and art. Viktor & Rolf have designed both haute couture and ready-to-wear collections. The duo is renowned for their avant-garde designs, which rely heavily on theatrical and performative fashion runways.

<i>Haute couture</i> Creation of exclusive, custom-fitted clothing

Haute couture is the creation of exclusive custom-fitted high-end fashion design. The term haute couture is French, "haute" meaning "high" or "elegant," and "couture" translating to "sewing" or "dressmaking." The term haute couture generally refers to a specific type of upper garment common in Europe during the 16th to the 18th century, or to the upper portion of a modern dress to distinguish it from the skirt and sleeves. Beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, Paris became the centre of a growing industry that focused on making outfits from high-quality, expensive, often unusual fabric and sewn with extreme attention to detail and finished by the most experienced and capable of sewers—often using time-consuming, hand-executed techniques. Couture translates literally from French as "dressmaking", sewing, or needlework and is also used as a common abbreviation of haute couture and can often refer to the same thing in spirit.

Veronique Branquinho is a Belgian fashion designer of Portuguese ancestry who studied at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp, from which she graduated in 1995. In 1997, she presented her first womenswear collection in Paris and in 1998 she founded her namesake brand Veronique Branquinho. She quickly rose to prominence in the international fashion scene and in 2003 she extended her brand with fall men's collection. In 2009, she decided to stop her label, as a consequence of the 2008 financial crisis, but she revived it three years later, in collaboration with Italian manufacturer Gibò. This was only a brief revival, as the brand was discontinued again in 2017. Veronique Branquinho was based in Antwerp, while her runway shows took place in Paris, the last of which was shown in June 2017.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sportswear (fashion)</span> Fashion category of relaxed day clothes, originally separates

Sportswear is an American fashion term originally used to describe separates, but which since the 1930s has come to be applied to day and evening fashions of varying degrees of formality that demonstrate a specific relaxed approach to their design, while remaining appropriate for a wide range of social occasions. The term is not necessarily synonymous with activewear, clothing designed specifically for participants in sporting pursuits. Although sports clothing was available from European haute couture houses and "sporty" garments were increasingly worn as everyday or informal wear, the early American sportswear designers were associated with ready-to-wear manufacturers. While most fashions in America in the early 20th century were directly copied from, or influenced heavily by Paris, American sportswear became a home-grown exception to this rule, and could be described as the American Look. Sportswear was designed to be easy to look after, with accessible fastenings that enabled a modern emancipated woman to dress herself without a maid's assistance.

Damir Doma is a luxury clothing brand and Croatian fashion designer based in Milano.

Cathy Pill is a Belgian fashion designer, formerly creator and director of Cathy Pill label, and presently co-founder and chief executive officer of MuseStyle.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">German fashion</span> Overview of fashion in the Federal Republic of Germany

Germany plays an important role in the fashion industry, along with France, the United Kingdom, the United States, Italy, Spain, and Japan. German fashion is known for unconventional young designers and manufacturers of sports and outdoor clothing, ready-to-wear and custom-made creations.

Steinunn Sigurðardóttir is an Icelandic fashion designer. She is the founder and creative director of the label STEiNUNN, founded in 2000.

Institut Français de la Mode (IFM) is a higher education institution offering postgraduate courses and applied research for the fashion, luxury goods, design and textile industries, and creative industries more generally. In 2017, IFM was ranked number 1 worldwide for Fashion Business Masters programs, and number 2 worldwide for Fashion Design Masters programs by The Business of Fashion.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anthony Vaccarello</span> Belgian-Italian fashion designer (born 1982)

Anthony Vaccarello is a Belgian-Italian fashion designer. He is the current creative director of Yves Saint Laurent. Prior to this position, he was creative director at Versus Versace. He has also designed his own eponymous line.

Valentina Kova is a Russian-American fashion designer and entrepreneur who co-founded her eponymous label in 2011 in New York City. Today, Valentina Kova is an American luxury brand specializing in knitwear, blouses, dresses, and fine jewelry. The label currently has their showroom and headquarters in New York’s SoHo neighborhood–available for styling and personal shopping appointments only. The brand has a boutique location in Palm Beach, Florida along Worth Avenue, while occupying temporary pop-up locations in places like Aspen and Nantucket for seasonal residences. Carrying a wide range of apparel including ready-to-wear, fine jewelry, and accessories, her designs nod to luxurious quality, natural fabrics, and true sustainability.

Emmanuelle Khanh was a French fashion designer, stylist and model. She was particularly known for her distinctive outsize eyewear, and was considered one of the leading young designers of the 1960s New Wave movement in France.

Christine Phung is a French fashion designer based in Paris. Phung is highly regarded for her digital prints. She is the founder of her own eponymous fashion label and the current creative director at Leonard Paris.

Liz Collins is an American contemporary artist and designer. Collins is recognized for her artwork involving fabric, knitwear, and textiles as well as the fashion label she developed. She has expertise in textile media including the transition of fabric into multi-dimensional forms as a method to vary the scale of her pieces to make them architectural and inviting rather than object-based. Collins is based in Brooklyn, New York.

Sophie Alouf-Bertot, is a Belgian graphic designer, painter and former teacher living and working in Brussels.

Valentine Avoh is a Belgian fashion designer of Ivorian descent. She is a wedding dress designer, writer, journalist and photographer. She started her own label in 2015 after working for fashion designers Alexander McQueen, Samantha Shaw, Alexis Mabille, Sam Andrès Milano, Spanish wedding dress label Pronovias and designer Marc Philippe Coudeyre. Following the social movement Black Lives Matter in the United States, Valentine Avoh has been published in The Coveteur and The New York Times as a young and talented European Black female bridal designer and on Brides (magazine) as one of the "20 Black Wedding Dress Designers to Know" in 2021.

Francine "Franc'" Pairon was a Belgian fashion designer and teacher. She was the founder of La Cambre-Mode(s) at La Cambre and of the "Master Fashion and Accessory Design" course at the Institut Français de la Mode.

References

  1. 1 2 Goyvaerts, Agnes (2015). The Belgians An Unexpected Fashion Story. Belgium: Lannoo. p. 43. ISBN   9789401428323.
  2. "How 200 years of industry shaped Belgium's identity". The Brussels Times. 2018-02-15. Retrieved 2021-06-28.
  3. 1 2 Barder, Liz (6 October 1978). "Designer Maggy Baum Putting Belgium on the Fashion Map". The Bulletin.
  4. "Achter de schermen van de Belgische Mode". Gazet Van Antwerpen. 28 September 1978.
  5. 1 2 Goyvaerts, Agnes (1989). Mode in de Lage Landen. Cantecleer. pp. 59–60. ISBN   9789021304618.
  6. "Passepoil, Piqûres et Pailettes: Dictionnaire du fil, des aiguillles et des étoffes".
  7. Vanmaercke, Serge (11 March 2004). "L'habit ne fait pas le mot". Trends/Tendances (in French).