Introduction
Marina Yee was a Belgian designer, artist and teacher whose intermittent fashion practice formed one of the distinct trajectories associated with the Antwerp Six. Born in Temse in 1958, she studied first at Sint-Lucas in Hasselt and then at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp, graduating with honours in 1981. After freelance work for Belgian manufacturers, she established the Marie label with Miyoshi Hobo in 1986 and joined the group presentation at the British Designer Show in London that year.
Yee ended Marie in 1990 and redirected her work towards private studio practice, reconstructed clothing and interdisciplinary projects. She opened the Indigo café and studio in Brussels in 1992, presented a small MY collection in Paris in 1995, designed for Lena Lena and Dirk Bikkembergs, and later worked across interiors and fragrance. From 2005 until her retirement in 2023, teaching at KASK, KABK and ESA Saint-Luc gave her practice an institutional reach beyond commercial fashion.
Her return began with the five-piece M.Y. Project at Laila Tokio in 2018 and developed into M.Y. Collection, co-founded with Rafaël Adriaensens in 2021. Yee died in Antwerp on 1 November 2025. Her historical contribution rests on a sustained method of reconstruction, material reuse and resistance to the speed and scale of seasonal production.
Design ethos
Yee worked through direct contact with existing garments. Vintage menswear, damaged clothing and flea-market textiles became material for folding, cutting, pinning and reconstruction; she called this attraction to worn and broken pieces “ready-kapot”. Exposed seams, chalk marks, loose threads and asymmetry retained evidence of the making process instead of concealing it beneath a finished surface.
Tailored archetypes—blazers, trench coats, parkas and wide trousers—provided structures that she could disassemble and redirect around the body. Her later work reduced the palette to indigo, navy, black and white, using heavy cotton, denim and wool with origami-like folds, restrained embroidery and precise fastening systems. Volume came from the manipulation of the original cloth more often than from added material.
This method also governed her limited approach to production. Yee preferred small runs, recovered materials and prolonged studio work to a continuous seasonal calendar. Her teaching and interdisciplinary projects extended that position without turning material reuse into a promotional claim: repair, memory and the visible hand remained practical components of the clothes.
Disclaimer
Career history
2026
Gallery Sofie Van de Velde presented a dedicated Marina Yee exhibition in Antwerp from 28 March to 10 May 2026. Garments appeared alongside paintings, collages and assemblages, showing how her fashion and visual art developed through the same material practice.
2026
MoMu opened The Antwerp Six on 28 March 2026, presenting the six designers as distinct practices rather than a shared label. Yee’s section drew on garments, early Golden Spindle material, visual art and later M.Y. Collection work held in the museum’s archive.
2025
Marina Yee died in Antwerp on 1 November 2025, aged 67, from pancreatic cancer. Her death ended a late commercial return built around M.Y. Collection and preceded major exhibitions reassessing her work across fashion and visual art.
2021
Marina Yee and archive curator Rafaël Adriaensens established M.Y. Collection in 2021. The label developed limited-edition garments from reconstructed tailoring, folded volume and Yee’s private archive, and ended with her death in November 2025.
2015
Yee collaborated with Louison Grajcar on a perfume project in 2015. The work extended her intermittent practice into fragrance without establishing a permanent product division.
2011
In 2011 Yee designed an interior textile line for Aristide comprising nine collections. The project transferred her material and colour practice from clothing into furnishing fabrics.
2005
From 2005 until her retirement in 2023, Yee taught across KASK in Ghent, KABK in The Hague and ESA Saint-Luc Tournai. Teaching gave her reconstruction-led practice an institutional reach outside commercial production.
1999
In 1999 Marina Yee designed winter womenswear for Miet Crabbé’s Belgian label Lena Lena. The commission formed part of Yee’s brief return to commercial design after the closure of Marie.
1992
Yee opened Indigo in Brussels’s Marolles district with artist Jan-Willem Thonnon in 1992. The café and studio placed her close to the local flea market, whose garments and objects fed a private practice spanning reconstruction, painting and interiors.
1986
Yee travelled to the British Designer Show in London with five fellow Antwerp designers in 1986. Buyers and the press condensed the group into the Antwerp Six, but the event presented six independent labels rather than a collective authorship.
1986
Marina Yee established the Marie label in 1986 with Japanese financial backer Miyoshi Hobo. The label supported her brief period of sustained seasonal production and ended in 1990 after Yee rejected the constraints of its commercial framework.
1981
After graduating from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp in 1981, Marina Yee undertook freelance assignments for Belgian manufacturers including Bassetti and Gruno & Chardin. Her Bassetti work entered the Golden Spindle competitions within Belgium’s state-backed Textile Plan.
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