In Conversation with Fashion Designer Meryll Rogge

For their installation in the collection presentation, fashion designer Meryll Rogge and artist Beni Bischof joined forces. During the last MoMu Talk, Rogge elaborated on the installation DO NOTHING CLUB, as well as her own journey and life.

"Despite the slight trauma, this feels like coming home," Meryll Rogge jokes about what it feels like to be back in the place where her fashion adventure began. Now that she visits MoMu and the Antwerp Fashion Department as an alumnus, she fortunately no longer has to fear deadlines and criticism from lecturers. On the contrary, she is here to unveil the montage DO NOTHING CLUB, the installation she created with Swiss artist Beni Bischof for MoMu.

The duo previously worked together for her MADE ON EARTH BY HUMANS S/S 2023 collection: "Back then, we sent the garments so he could paint them. For this collection, he even mailed us his entire archive. We spent hours looking through his vast body of work, because he is a fantastic painter and watercolourist."

Although the title of the installation suggests otherwise, Rogge already has an eventful career behind her. That’s why she also uses this conversation to look back at her childhood and career: "As a child, I wanted to become an illustrator at Walt Disney. In my teenage years, fashion became my new obsession. At that time, I read magazines such as Vogue Paris and Jalouse and watched Tim Blanks' Fashion File and Tiany Kiriloff's Alive.Style."

After obtaining a bachelor’s degree in law, she was allowed to start her fashion studies: "What was so nice about my time at the academy is that here it's all about developing yourself on a creative level. There is freedom here to be who you want to be, there is also no pressure to adhere to something or someone. Yet I would only really succeed in that later."

"It was my absolute dream job," Rogge continues about her work at Marc Jacobs. After her internship, she was able to stay on as Women's Collection designer: "But the most important aspect of that period abroad is that there was space to explore my own interests. Far away from the influence of my family and childhood friends."

After seven years in New York, she became Head of Women's Design at Dries Van Noten: "He was the only person who could bring me back to Belgium. Although even then I was toying with the idea of starting on my own, it was also a dream to design for him one day. As a student, I passed by his shop almost every day."

"In those four years at Dries, I learned that as a fashion designer, you can work anywhere," Rogge says. "So when I started my own brand, I deliberately chose the countryside. I needed a quiet environment and it offered more space."

Meryll Rogge and Beni Bischof's installation is on view in MoMu's collection presentation through 25 May 2025. More info