PARIS — Ludovic de Saint Sernin, the designer known for his sensual, gender-fluid creations, has been named creative director of Ann Demeulemeester, signaling a recent creative direction for the home owned by Italian retailer Claudio Antonioli.

In a teaser of his vision for the label, de Saint Sernin released a set of images, photographed by Willy Vanderperre and styled by Olivier Rizzo, during which he wears items from the Ann Demeulemeester archive dating back to the Nineteen Nineties, including a black leather halterneck top with a knotted neckline and an ivory satin fishtail skirt.

“Authorship and autobiography gain centrality, as Ludovic de Saint Sernin shapes the Ann Demeulemeester traits around his vision, proclivities and individuality, offering a first-person reading and the reference to today’s audience that comes from that,” the brand said in an announcement provided exclusively to WWD.

“Sensuality, tension, silhouette, fluidity, wildness and a graphic feel are defining pillars of the language Ludovic de Saint Sernin is about to construct as he traces the brand new course of Ann Demeulemeester, injecting his approach to fashion as a tool to shape and free one’s presence and appearance,” it added.

Born in Brussels and raised in Paris, de Saint Sernin graduated from the École Supérieure des Arts Appliqués Duperré in Paris. The designer, who cut his teeth at Balmain before launching his eponymous label in 2017, is as a result of present his first collection for Ann Demeulemeester in March during Paris Fashion Week.

Amongst his signature pieces is a pair of eyelet-studded, laced-crotch briefs that has established a recent product category of luxury underwear for men. For his spring 2022 lineup, his first showing during women’s fashion week, de Saint Sernin presented as much menswear as womenswear.

“Once I began the brand, a very powerful thing was to give you the chance to inform my story through the collections, so quite a lot of them are very autobiographical because I all the time feel I relate to people’s stories greater than a story that’s invented,” he told WWD last yr. “The identical way a musician or an artist goes to pour their feelings into an album, I’m form of going to do the identical thing in a set.”

The Ann Demeulemeester label has been designed by an in-house team for the reason that departure of creative director Sébastien Meunier in July 2020. Shortly afterward, Antonioli revealed he had acquired the brand, including its complete archive, the headquarters, its historic flagship in Antwerp, and its showroom space in Paris.

A pensive woman with gothic leanings, Demeulemeester helped put Antwerp on the worldwide fashion map together with her soigné tailoring and dark glamour.

Considered one of the unique “Antwerp Six,” she began showing in Paris in 1992 and quickly became a fashion star, with WWD anointing her “Queen Ann” in a headline following a blockbuster collection in 1995 that will influence runways in other fashion capitals. She added menswear a yr later.

Demeulemeester bowed out of fashion in 2013 to embark on other ventures, namely pottery and ceramics. Nevertheless, she stays near the brand, while her homeware and lighting designs — amongst other projects — are on display within the Antwerp store, which was reopened last yr.

In June, she staged an exhibition through the Pitti Uomo men’s trade show in Florence celebrating 40 years of the label. 

“I see my fashion as my child and now it’s able to go by itself on the planet with other people. It’s nice, it’s beautiful to have people who are working with respect. You could have to offer it a likelihood and provides them the trust they should do that,” she told WWD on the time.

Antonioli is proving his eagerness to revive the storied brand to its former glory after years of what he described as over-distribution and, at times, insufficient quality.

Since taking full control of the corporate, the chief has shifted just about all manufacturing to Italy and has trimmed the variety of wholesale doors by 60 percent, eyeing the chance to open freestanding boutiques in Paris, London and Milan in the subsequent two or three years, and in Asia with partners.

Antonioli founded his first Milan retail outpost in 1987 and is a cofounder of streetwear conglomerate Latest Guards Group, which was acquired by Farfetch. 

Along with his Antonioli stores — with physical locations in Milan and Torino in Italy, Lugano in Switzerland and Ibiza in Spain, plus the web site — the entrepreneur established an organization called Dreamers Factory that can encompass Ann Demeulemeester and future projects that relate to his personal passions.