Tom van der Borght.
Tom Van Der Borght is a 43-year-old young fashion designer. That’s certainly uncommon, but not totally unheard of. After all, Christian Dior, Giorgio Armani, and Vera Wang all founded their eponymous businesses at around the same age. What’s a young fashion designer, anyway? Is the title determined by age or experience? Perhaps is it solely about one’s mindset? In his poem ‘Youth’, Samuel Ullman describes how the power of a young mind surpasses all. The opening reads as follow: ‘Youth is not a time of life; it is a state of mind; it is not a matter of rosy cheeks, red lips and supple knees; it is a matter of the will, a quality of the imagination, a vigour of the emotions; it is the freshness of the deep springs of life.’ So Tom Van Der Borght is a young fashion designer.
Born and raised in a small village in the northeast region of Belgium, Tom’s first connection to fashion came from his mother, a classically trained pattern cutter and sewing teacher. ‘She knew all about the technical stuff,’ he says, with a touching admiration in his voice, ‘and I grew up surrounded by a lot of fabrics and clothes.’ When Tom turned 18, his parents convinced him to put his artistic ambitions aside and pursue what they considered to be a more serious curriculum. ‘So I did social studies, and then worked for seven years as social worker for children and teenagers with difficult backgrounds and complicated family stories.’ But fashion continued to creep into Tom’s mind for years. Around the age of 30, he had an epiphany. ‘I decided to live my dream and enrolled at Sint Niklaas Academy.’ Following his graduation in 2012, Tom founded his studio and started developing collections, graphics, videos, artworks. ‘I didn’t want to limit myself to fashion and I’ve always had this ability to develop my own textiles, prints, graphics.’ But despite spending much time experimenting and having fun with his artistic life, Tom felt that he needed yet another academic boost. So in 2018, he went back to school to attend a Master’s in performance arts and artistic research. “It was to deepen and broaden my artistic work and find ways to connect this fashion part with the visual art part and performative part of my work.’ Tom then launched his current ongoing design project, which ended with him winning both the Grand Jury and Audience prizes at the Hyères Festival in 2020.
Tom’s seemingly chaotic creations are a direct materialisation of his artistic mantra: more is more. ‘I always build a universe starting from day-to-day experiences in my own life that I translate into something larger than life. I like accumulation and overload of information. I want people to discover new details the longer they look at my work.’ Tom tells me about the concept of anti-editing which fuels his designs. ‘When you’re in fashion school, they teach you a lot about editing, simplifying, getting to the point. I like to add more.’ In his work, it translates into a print turned embroidery, for instance. ‘I know the piece is finished when nothing else can be added to it. It’s part of how I look at life and at concepts of diversity and normativity. When you tick boxes you always eliminate information, otherwise you cannot classify things in boxes. But for me, the accumulation of information is a way to escape from boxes with pieces you can put in so many boxes.’ No wonder Björk his ultimate muse. ‘Yes, but I’d say my work is the lovechild that Björk, Charles Fréger and Leigh Bowery conceived at an orgy.’
Tom’s vision for the future of fashion is as unique as his designs. ‘We need a new way to connect with clothes. I’m going against this idea of products which leave you feeling a need for more and new and different. I try to stay a little bit away from that.” Thinking of the future of fashion, Tom believes in the power of tangible objects with textures and shapes titillating our senses. ‘People will have a bigger need for things they can touch, and that’s very much what I try to suggest as a potential alternative.’
