MoMu Antwerp Examines Gender, Fashion, and Space in “Fashion and Interiors: A Gendered Affair”

Unpacking the social constructs behind fashion and design, MoMu’s new exhibition explores how gender roles shaped aesthetics, domesticity, and creative agency from the 19th century to today.

“Her sphere is withing the household, which she should beautify, and of which she should be the chief ornament”.

On March 29, MoMu – Fashion Museum Antwerp opens its latest exhibition, Fashion and Interiors: A Gendered Affair, a thought-provoking study curated by Romy Cocks that traces the deep entanglement between gender identity, fashion, and interior aesthetics. Through garments, objects, furniture, and architectural references, the exhibition navigates the evolution of gendered creative space – beginning with the 19th-century ideal of bourgeois femininity and culminating in today’s more fluid, conceptual approaches to design.

The Domestic Ideal and Its Ornament

At the core of the exhibition lies a critical reflection on how Western cultural norms in the late 1800s relegated women to the domestic sphere. A quote from economist and critic Thorstein Veblen sets the tone: “Her sphere is within the household, which she should beautify, and of which she should be the chief ornament”. This notion positioned the home not only as a stage for femininity but also as a space where women themselves became an aesthetic element, draped in fabric, lace, and symbolism that mirrored the interiors around them.

Male designers of the era, including Belgian artist and architect Henry van de Velde, reinforced this ideology through a vision of total design – blending architecture, furnishing, fashion, and accessories into a singular artistic expression. Women’s bodies, in turn, became integrated into these spaces through layers of decorative clothing, merging them visually and ideologically with the domestic environment.

Modernism and the Rejection of Ornament

The exhibition pivots to the early 20th century, where a new generation of architects and designers – including Adolf Loos, Lilly Reich, and Le Corbusier – began to dismantle the ornate visual codes of the precious era. Le Corbusier, in particular, advocated for functional design stripped of excess. His forestiére jacket, commissioned in 1947 from Parisian boutique Arnys, exemplifies his desire for streamlined utility in both private life and public architecture.

This ethos would later influence Belgian fashion’s most prominent voices. Ann Demeulemeester, after acquiring Le Corbuier’s only Belgian building in 1983, internalized his aesthetic clarity. On display at MoMu are pieces that bridge the disciplines: her minimalist porcelain tableware for Serax, and a fall 1996 jumpsuit that echoes the same quiet, architectural restraint.

Martin Margiela, known for disrupting fashion codes, took this event further. His early shows – set in entirely whitewashed environments filled with secondhand furniture – reimagined domestic space as a conceptual runway. While Le Corbusier used white to erase the past, Margiela used it to elevate discarded objects, turning utilitarian necessity into artistic statement.

Objects in Motion: From Interiors to Identity

Other pivotal wors in the exhibition include Hussein Chalayan’s iconic coffee table skirt from his fall 2000 “Afterwords” collection. Transforming furniture into fashion, Chalayan’s piece references forced migration and the transformation of domestic life into survival. The model stepping into the table – turning it into wearable armor – becomes a metaphor for resilience, mobility, and the fragility of what we call home.

Across time and context, these designers challenge and reinterpret how bodies inhabit space – both physically and symbolically. In the final sections of the exhibition, Cocks turns toward the present, where the boundary between fashion and interiors is increasingly porous. From luxury bedding to curated furniture lines, fashion brands are extending their vision of style into the domestic sphere.

Toward a Genderless Future

“Fashion and Interiors: A Gendered Affair” ultimately argues that the rigid dichotomies of the past – public versus private, masculine versus feminine – are dissolving. Today, both industries are shaped less by decorative hierarchy and more by minimalism, function, and the conceptual blurring of categories.

“I think because the separate sphere that dictate life between approximately 1850 and 1960 have largely disappeared in the Western world”, said Cockx. Her exhibition doesn’t simply revisit historical constructs – it reflects a broader societal shift toward reimagining space, identity, and design as fluid and self-defined.

Fashion and Interiors: A Gendered Affair runs through August 3 at MoMu – Fashion Museum Antwerp.

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