Palais de Tokyo’s show space was perfumed in a thick, rolling mist. It intended to recall the ports of Antwerp, which was an inspiration behind designer Sébastien Meunier’s nautical theme for SS20. There was also Fassbinder’s Querelle, the semi-niche erotic arthouse film about a Belgian sailor. Funnily enough, not the first Querelle reference this week. Fellow Antwerp Six member Dries Van Noten cited the film too, and overt sensuality has been a through-line of the season thus far. At Ann Demeuelemeester, marinière uniforms were feminized and intriguingly deconstructed; buttoned haphazardly as if dressed or undressed in a heated moment.

A reading from Shakespeare’s King Richard III played like a sermon overhead. Of course, for the brand’s Byronic heroes, the sea is never just the sea, but, as the Duke of Clarence muses in Act I, haunting meditations on the melancholic floods and tempests of the soul.