You Need to Know: Botter
This is Botter – primarily a menswear label, with some womenswear sprinkled here and there – launched in 2016 by the design duo of Lisi Herrebrugh and Rushemy Botter. While the designer couple both have Caribbean heritage – Herrebrugh’s family is from the Dominican Republic and Botter was actually born in Curacao – the label got its start in Antwerp. And following an award-winning Masters collection from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, together they built scaffolding for the possibilities of Caribbean couture as they saw it.
Blending the knotty multiculturalism of the Caribbean with Belgian and dutch tailoring, Botter expresses the uncanny magnetism of the islands and flushes everything through the filter of virility, femininity, and – most importantly – sustainability. The brand is intensely focused on protecting nature and the environment, and this urgency is displayed in the way it incorporates and honours the sea through its designs.
I love how they play with texture and colour throughout their collections. It’s just pure wildness happening over there.
And much like Curacao, their collections are often super vibrant; yet they always seem kind of quaintly antique. Erring on the side of visual play, their runway presentations regularly trade stiff formality for more teasing, youthful references. There’s an almost odd elegance to their slouchy looks; like they intentionally stitched together wide strips of playfulness and dandyism – and it works.
The Masters collection won them many awards for emerging talent, including the Dries Van Noten Award and the Ann Demeulemeester Award. In 2018, the designers were appointed Creative Directors of Nina Ricci’s fashion division. And in 2022, they won the Andam Fashion Award and were listed in the Business of Fashion’s 500 list. Their pieces have been seen on Burna Boy, Harry Styles, Billie Eilish, and Davido, to name a few.