The morning before the photo shoot for this story, which is taking place in Paris, Marie Adam-Leenaerdt is working at home in Schaerbeek, an attractive neighborhood in northeast Brussels, while a summer storm pummels the greenhouse roof in her garden downstairs. The window from her office overlooks it, and you can’t see anything but sideways rain. In a few hours, she’ll catch the train and stay the night with her boyfriend’s French parents, who are storing the clothes for the models, so that she’ll be ready for the call time tomorrow. The back-and-forth to Paris is something Adam-Leenaerdt, 28, is used to; sometimes she even takes the longer route to get there, by car, so she can bring her Labrador. She doesn’t mind. Not enough to up sticks and move, as many of her peers have done.
“It’s the comfort of life here,” she says of Brussels, where she was born and raised. “It’s a city, but it feels like a village. It isn’t far from Paris or London. Here, you can have a house with a garden. I like gardening to clear my head. I like to cook and have friends over for dinner.” The 1920s home where she launched her brand, and keeps 15 varieties of heritage tomatoes, belongs to her parents, who live on the lower floors. Adam-Leenaerdt has a self-contained flat at the top, which doubles as a workspace and showroom. Her family is close. “My mother helps me every day,” she says. “With the budgets, the strategy, the mental support.”
Adam-Leenaerdt graduated from La Cambre, a visual arts school in Brussels, in 2020 and launched her self-titled label at Paris Fashion Week in 2023. One of her professors, Tony Delcampe, remembers that even as a student, she was committed to working in fashion while maintaining a healthy personal life. “She’s very involved with arts, but also cooking and gardening,” he says. “That allows her to have distance from the fashion world.” Between graduation and her debut show, she had entry-level jobs at Balenciaga and Givenchy. The narrow focus of the role, as a small cog at a big design house, was unfulfilling. “After six months at Balenciaga,” she says, “I had worked on clothes but not accessories. I wanted to work on all the pieces of the wardrobe, and not be limited to garments.” When she launched her own brand, she offered clothes, shoes, and bags right off the bat. She dabbled in swimwear. Recently, she has moved into knitwear, too.
