At Amsterdam Fashion Week, Netherlands’ designer Rushemy Botter created a fashion furor. New to the circuit, Botter presented a sophisticated, street-cultured collection. This Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp graduate turned out a noteworthy line and several styles to talk about.
Who is this designer? When it comes to pondering over what to design, he studies other designs, their techniques. With tremendous creativity, Botter comes up with looks that are completely different. For this spring/summer 2019 show, he used a prop from his graduation class presentation. With the help of family, friends and his partner Lisi Herrebrugh, he dismantled it at the school and set it up on stage. The piece was created with big wooden panels enhanced with illustrations by his friend Iwan Smit. As part of the collection, it was quite a spectacle. His clothes were fabulous, and the show was very entertaining.
Botter is a hands-on designer who’s ambitious and ready for success in his career. He gained technical fashion expertise while studying in the Netherlands. He also performed a stint in the military. However, the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp played a huge role in his decision to become a fashion designer.
Ready for today’s fashion environment, his clothes show a voice of social relevance. Botter’s brand was launched last year for fall/winter 2018. He showed a new depth to his collection and received a nod at New York Fashion Week during the VFILES presentation.
For spring/summer 2019, some of his looks featured military influences. With the pieces modeled by Black male mannequins, the designer created newsy motorcycle gang jackets, shirts and pants. Other designs in the line divulged activists moods, for which the designer received rave reviews. Botter gets his inspiration from traveling to London, Paris and Curaçao, the former Dutch island colony in the Caribbean, where Botter has family ties.
In this streetwear collection, there were plenty of oversized puffy outerwear jackets, sharp suits, bold accessories and vibrant colors. The looks were fashion forward, although, some of his men’s suit pieces were reminiscent of Harlem, USA’s savvy clothes of the early ’30s and ’40s. Overall, Botter’s designs were outstanding.