Marina Yee (1958–2025) was a Belgian designer and artist, and one of the original members of the legendary Antwerp Six. Within this influential group, which reshaped international fashion in the 1980s, she remained its most enigmatic and uncompromising voice.
Yee studied at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp. Early on, she developed a strong sensitivity to material, layering, and silhouette. She later chose to step away from the international fashion scene in order to pursue a more personal and introspective path.
Her visual work; paintings, collages, assemblages, and installations, is not separate from her fashion practice, but a direct extension of it. As in her garments, she worked with found materials and fragments: fabrics, paper, images, and words brought together intuitively. The acts of cutting, rearranging, and recontextualising reflect her way of designing. A search for form guided by feeling rather than concept.
Yee considered modesty and simplicity essential conditions for beauty. She had no interest in grand statements; her work speaks through quiet but determined gestures. In both her art and her clothing, a natural sense of movement emerges. As if the work remains open and breathing. For Yee, process was more important than outcome.
Marina Yee leaves behind a distinctive and coherent body of work that resists trends and conventions. An oeuvre grounded in intuition, integrity, and stillness.
