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Some designers make clothes. Walter Van Beirendonck has spent decades building an entire visual planet: one where colour becomes protest, bodies become declarations, and fashion refuses to behave politely.
At the 2026 SAVVY Awards, the Belgian designer has been recognised as one of this year’s key laureates, celebrated for a career that has pushed fashion beyond garments and into the realm of identity, fantasy, humour, sexuality, and political imagination. The awards describe themselves as a global platform honouring creativity across different fields, and this year’s edition stretches that idea across fashion, design, science, ecology, and humanitarian work.
Van Beirendonck’s importance is not simply that he has a recognisable style, though he absolutely does. His work has always felt like a refusal: a refusal of tastefulness as obedience, a refusal of masculinity as something fixed, a refusal of fashion as just luxury product. In his universe, clothes can be cartoonish, erotic, utopian, angry, tender, and absurdly beautiful all at once.
That resistance has also shaped generations of designers. As a longtime creative force at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp, Van Beirendonck helped define Antwerp’s reputation as a city where fashion could be intellectual, radical, and deeply strange without losing its emotional force. The SAVVY jury also highlighted his integrity and humility, qualities that make his influence feel less like branding and more like cultural weather.
This year’s awards also look outward, placing Van Beirendonck alongside figures working across very different forms of imagination. Alexis Martial and Adrien Caillaudaud were recognised for Amca Oval, their project merging fashion, furniture, interiors, sculptural design, and immersive environments. Merlin Sheldrake was honoured for bringing the hidden world of fungi into public consciousness through science and storytelling. Meanwhile, Movement On The Ground, founded by Charlie McGregor and Adil Izemrane, was celebrated for its work transforming refugee camps into more sustainable, dignified communities.
Together, the selection suggests a broader definition of creativity: not as decoration, but as a way of reorganising how we live, dress, think, shelter, learn, and care. In that context, Van Beirendonck feels like the perfect symbol. His fashion has never been about fitting in. It has always been about imagining the world differently, then dressing for it before anyone else is ready.
