PARIS — Belgian designer Marina Yee, one of the members of the “Antwerp Six,” died Nov. 1. She was 67.
Her death after a battle with cancer was revealed by the MoMu Antwerp fashion museum.
The museum’s director Kaat Debo called Yee “an extraordinarily authentic voice in Belgian fashion” whose work was “radically honest, poetic, and always rooted in respect for both people and materials.”
“She taught us that fashion can be more than trends — a means of reflection, care, and connection,” Debo continued. “Her legacy will live on at MoMu and far beyond.”
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Born in 1958 in Antwerp, Yee went to study at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp, part of a generation that included Ann Demeulemeester, Dries Van Noten, Walter Van Beirendonck, Dirk Van Saene and Dirk Bikkembergs.
Having worked for the likes of Belgian labels Gruno & Chardin and Bassetti after her 1981 graduation, she launched her own brand, called “Marie,” in 1986.
She took part in the 1986 British Designer Show in London that put the group of designers on the map and where they were first dubbed the “Antwerp Six.” The group later piled into a van and drove to Paris to show their wares, taking the city by storm and putting a small Belgian city on the fashion map.
From 1990 onward, Yee left fashion behind to pursue other creative avenues such as theater costumes, interior design and art.
The designer then went into teaching, first at the École Supérieure des Arts Saint-Luc de Tournai, which is prized for its art and architecture departments. Most recently she taught at the Koninklijke Academie voor Schone Kunsten in the city of Ghent and the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague.
She made a return to fashion in 2018 with a handful of designs reimagined from vintage fashions and introduced in Japan under the name M.Y. Collection.
The upcycling and couture-inflected label, where she counted Belgian designer Rafaël Adriaensens as a close collaborator, formally relaunched in 2022 and counted more than 40 stockists worldwide including Dover Street Market New York and its counterpart in Los Angeles, Ssense and SKP in Beijing.
In 2024, Yee was awarded the jury prize at the Belgian Fashion Awards for her new label.
Her work will be at the heart of a 2026 exhibition on the “Antwerp Six” and their individual trajectories at MoMu Antwerp, expected to run from March 2026 to January 2027.