Meryll Rogge

“What’s the point in doing fashion if you’re not going to be honest? This is not the industry I dreamt of.” This is what Belgian designer Meryll Rogge asked during our phone call, but her question is part of a wider interrogation of the very meaning of fashion. “The fashion I dreamt of when I was younger, and still do in fact, is fashion that motivates you, that inspires you, that makes you fühlen something.” 

After graduating from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp, Meryll Rogge began her career in New York as a womenswear designer for Marc Jacobs, a position that she would hold for seven years. “I remember arriving at Marc’s studio in New York and seeing the references on the board, and it just made sense to me,” explains Rogge. “Before this role, I had felt hesitant, a bit out of place sometimes. But when I was with Marc, it felt like home. I understood what these people liked, what they spoke about, what they admired in fashion and art because it paralleled what I was interested in. It was the best school I could have had.” After Marc Jacobs, Rogge returned to Antwerp to work alongside Dries Van Noten – who remains a dear friend and with whom she shares a love of colour – as Head of Design for womenswear. “Dries was one of the people that I really appreciated and admired in fashion for a long time. It was so interesting to see his process, how his mind worked, how he collaborated. He is a very good listener and is always receptive to new ideas.” Despite her success within these fashion environments, Rogge yearned for something more, something that she felt was her own. 

A resilient seed planted in her youth continued to grow, and in 2019, only a few months before the pandemic struck, Rogge made the leap to launch her eponymous label. Set up in a former farm, where her family have lived since she was six, the designer’s studio is a light-flooded space surrounded by greenery, nine miles southwest of Ghent. Located on the industry’s periphery, away from oversaturated fashion capitals, Rogge is just one of many young designers who are decentralising the fashion system into diverse pockets of fashion creativity dotted across the globe. Rejecting conformity, Rogge finds inspiration in the world around her, incorporating elements of workwear together with references to classic, perhaps even clichéd, Americana. The results are traditional silhouettes effortlessly reimagined; conventional patterns with a slight edge; cuts reminiscent of the Eighties punk scene. 

The label’s most recent collection, Spring/Summer 2023, was inspired by a trip Rogge took to the escapist Los Angeles, where – in the eyes of a foreigner – fantasy and reality are blurred into a curious melting pot of wonder. “This was my first trip since the pandemic and it felt so fresh to see people dress differently, talk differently, think differently. There was just this sense of freedom that stuck with me, a freedom that we don’t always have in the fashion capitals.” Rogge continues, “I guess our generation is missing that Eighties mentality, you know, where everyone was doing their own thing and others respected it. Now, we’re in this era of Instagram where everyone is a kind of replica of somebody else. We wanted to say something a bit different, stay true to ourselves.” 

“It was about not thinking too much, not overthinking it,” Rogge said of the collection. Working with a feeling of intuition, the designer collaborated with Swiss artist Beni Bischof who, to borrow Rogge’s own term, is quite the “revolutionary”. Rogge discovered Bischof’s work when she came across his Rambo und Bambi books, which are a charming take on the Hollywood film characters in soft watercolours. Bischof worked on a selection of not-for-sale pieces for the collection, such as a mesh shawl with the words “People grow to be stranger” painted in smudged watercolour and a cream dress decorated with iconic characters from Disney’s Bambi. Leaning towards a more democratic sensibility, Rogge’s designs find beauty in the most mundane of elements, stemming from her love and admiration for vintage clothing. “The thing with vintage is that it has already lived for a long time, yet it’s still somehow relevant. Vintage designs have the potential to lay the foundation for the future and their nostalgia has the power to make people feel something.” Fascinated with how vintage clothes can be carriers of memory and storytelling, Rogge sees reinterpreted vintage design as a way of bringing emotion to fashion, creating pieces that stand the test of time. 

“Collectively, the most important thing for us is to create pieces that can be kept and worn for a long time, like vintage clothing can. We’re interested in making pieces that will give you pleasure, inspire you, make you fühlen.” 

Something that stood out to me during our conversation was Rogge’s constant use of inclusive pronouns such as “us” and “we”, rather than the possessive “I” and “me” so often used by fashion designers. “The idea of the solitary creative designer is not true,” she says, when I questioned why. “Being a designer is about teamwork – on all levels; creatively, professionally, personally. Fashion has always been about collaboration. This is what enriches it.” While it may seem as though they’ve got a well-sized group running the show, Meryll Rogge is only a three-person team. “It’s funny, we’re actually planning on doing a Christmas party this year, and, since there are only three of us, I made a list of all the extra people who have worked with us over the years,” she laughs. “It only came to 50 people!” Rogge’s understanding of the many ecosystems of fashion that allow it to thrive is emblematic of the new generation of designers: designers who are designing out of fervour rather than ego, out of the need to challenge conventions rather than conform to them. But, as a young designer, Rogge admits that “creativity is difficult sometimes, I’m not going to sugarcoat it. I’ve had to make a lot of sacrifices.” But with sacrifice comes perseverance, and with perseverance there’s hope. 

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