To be a fashion correspondent, you need to be a fashion expert. Tom will teach you how.
Tom Van Der Borght (1978) is a fashion designer who lives and works in Gent. He is a graduate of the Stedelijke Academie voor Schone Kunsten Sint Niklaas.
After an earlier career in social work, at the age of 27 Tom returns to his first love: fashion. Taking his cue from his mother, a trained sewing teacher, he starts making playful and eccentric garments for friends and acquaintances. Even in those first endeavors the very beginnings of a highly personal aesthetic are clearly discernible.
Tom Van Der Borght is not in search of traditional beauty or honey-sweet cutesiness. Bold combinations of bright colors, psychedelic graphics and textures make for a true bombardment of the senses. This new kid on the fashion block is not only exploring the boundaries of traditional beauty. He boldly crosses them to create his own standard of beauty.
VDB is always on the lookout for the unconventional and puts into question mainstream social structures. What does society considers normal and why? What is weird and why? His garments serve as armor for strong super humans in an urban setting. But cracks are showing. In his last collection 'Church of Chica' VDB, who suffers from a progressive muscular disorder, uses the image of his own faulty DNA ¬¬ to design some of the prints
Yet all is not serious. A sense of humor and self-depreciative playfulness show in the way he teasingly covers and reveals in his designs. Another hint of this can be seen in his use of extreme detailing.
Throughout his impeccably finished couture collections strong influences of streetwear reverberate. All prints used in Van Der Borght's collection are originals. Modern, industrial techniques such as printing and laser cutting happily co-exist with traditional handicrafts like crochet and embroidery. Van der Borght also frequently collaborates with other artist e.g. in music and video.
For now, Van der Borght limits himself to one collection a year. All garments can be worn by both men as women. The current collection COC (Church of Chica) features one of a kind pieces as well as more commercial pieces that are produced on a small scale.
