I call myself a Creative Director and a Curator, an Opinion Leader, an Educator and a Critical Thinker. With more than 50 years experiences in different creative fields, I am super excited and motivated to share my knowledge and experiences with the ops.1335 team.

My 25 years of directing and teaching in the fashion department of
Antwerp Royal Academy while simultaneously managing my Antwerp retail designer
shop sharpened my skills to understand creativity in all its aspects. I founded
the Flanders Fashion Institute to develop those experiences but when I was
nominated the director of the Fashion Museum “MoMu” that my focus to curate
fashion in a museum space sharing with an audience of fashion lovers became a passionate experience. Building “ModeNatie”, a building of 11.000m2, hosting the Fashion Department, the Fashion Museum and the Fashion Institute was a very special moment to bring all the different creative fields together under one roof.

In 2007 I was invited in Florence to become the director of Polimoda, a school
with a great potential for growth. That’s when I could reunite all my Italian
experiences and my Italian roots and translate it in a new project that gave me
and education new energy. Polimoda became a research centre with a very broad
educational offer. Inviting the most famous fashion schools in the world to
Florence for the IFFTI conference became an important moment to share the
cultural network of Florence with students and faculty members. After 9 years
of directorship, and 9 years of Adviser Strategy and Vision for the Polimoda
board of directors, I am grateful that Florence became a second home. Traveling
the world from Japan to China, New York, to Paris, Milan, London, and different
cities in the world sharing my experiences true lectures and exhibitions,
enriched my knowledge and my network I am so honoured to share with ops.1335
today.

To document those experiences, I edited a few books. First MOMENTS ISBN:
978 88 572 3176 1 - edited and published by Polimoda, later LIFE IS A VORTEX ISBN:
978-88-572-4062-6 by Skira and THE FASHION CONTAINER PROJECT ISBN: 978-3-904985-1-6. The “11 CONTAINER PROJECT” discovered by ops.1335 is the reason and the great opportunity to be part of the ops.1335 team and project. The 11
containers are based on 11 concepts, sharing knowledge on the digital (1) area
we live in to profound research on critical thinking (2), giving a voice to a
young generation that will be stimulated to those discussion platforms (3). The
research container is leading the way to curiosity, not accepting what we feel
for granted but giving a voice to the today creative world (4). We need to be
surprised (5) by discoveries of new concepts of creativity, we will look at the
history (6) of the creative industries, we will expose and curate objects of
design and fashion (7) in order to share our visions and learn new ones we need
so desperately in the complex world we live in. We will say load what we think
in silence (8) and study the pattern of society in countries to discover (9).
The brain is the object that remains a mystery as we think and dream
differently (10) but it’s around the dining table that we share the best ideas
to be developed (11).

The 11 containers are: THE DIGITAL CONTAINER, THE EXHIBITION CONTAINER, THE CRITICAL CONTAINER, THE RESEARCH CONTAINER, THE NOW CONTAINER, THE HISTORY CONTAINER, THE VOICE CONTAINER, THE SURPRISE CONTAINER,
THE PATTERN CONTAINER, THE BRAIN CONTAINER, THE DINING CONTAINER.

Enjoy!