Asymmetric Draped Shoulder Top
From the SS97 collection acquired by the Met's Costume Institute — the moment Demeulemeester hit her stride, producing garments so elegantly nonchalant they appeared to be falling off the body in slow motion.
The asymmetric draped pieces from Spring/Summer 1997 represent Ann Demeulemeester’s breakthrough. The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute acquired pieces from this collection, recognizing a significance that was immediately apparent on the runway: these were garments that appeared to shrug off one shoulder, that resembled classical drapery rebuilt through the sensibility of someone who had grown up listening to Patti Smith rather than studying ancient Greece. The construction employed highly asymmetrical patterns on each side, creating dynamic tension between structure and fluidity — a top that was precisely engineered to look like it had been thrown on carelessly.
Demeulemeester created the collection because she “felt tired of seeing women in close-to-the-body clothes.” The runway show featured Patti Smith’s “Because the Night” at pounding volume, models with bedroom hair, and garments that Katherine Betts described as “exquisitely cut to look like they were falling off in a vampy grunge-meets-gangsta way.” The clothes felt discrete and uncontrived, prioritizing the study of form over any obligation to trend or season.
The SS97 collection followed a previous season that Demeulemeester herself described as “too hard-edged and contrived,” making this work’s critical and commercial success a course correction that defined everything that followed. The asymmetric draped constructions established templates she would refine throughout her career, and they remain the purest expression of her design DNA: romantic proportions, experimental construction, and a poetic approach to tailoring that treats the body as a collaborator rather than a mannequin.