BELGIAN BLOCK.(Brief Article)

NEW YORK -- All joking aside, Belgium has contributed more to culture than waffles, fries and Hercule Poirot. And in the past couple of decades, the fashion industry has gotten more than its fair share of the country's creative quotient.

That's why the Fashion Institute of Technology here is taking a look at the modern phenomenon of Belgian fashion design, from the early days of the so-called Antwerp Six up to the latest generation of Belgian-born and trained designers. And Barneys New York, which has been selling Belgians since the early days of Dries van Noten and Anne Demeulemeester, will install window displays to run in conjunction with the exhibit's first few weeks.

"I've been thinking about doing a Belgians exhibit for a year now," said Valerie Steele, FIT's co-curator of the show along with Fred Dennis. "I feel more excited about this than just about anything I've seen since the Japanese designs of the Eighties. These designers are approaching this as artists, looking at ideas like deconstruction in new ways. There's so much creativity at a time when so much fashion is all about recycling and repackaging."

Steele went to Antwerp last year to sit on a jury at the renowned Royal Academy -- alma mater of van Noten, Demeulemeester and Martin Margiela, among others -- and came back convinced a show had to be done "sooner than later."

The exhibit, called "Belgian Fashion: Antwerp Style," opens Feb. 1, will run through April 14 and will feature 10 designers or design teams, including Demeulemeester, van Noten, Margiela, Walter van Beirendonck, Dirk van Saene, ...