Back in 1976, not long before Ann Demeulemeester left her small Flanders town of Waregem to study at Antwerp's Royal Academy, she made a startling discovery at her local music store. She was stopped dead in her tracks by the sight of Horses, Patti Smith's 1975 debut album. "I had no idea who it was by," she says. "I was just struck by the cover." Certainly the sleeve image, a portrait of the singer bv Smith's close friend Robert Mapplethorpe,rnis almost as intense as the music itself. Smith coolly stares out, lanky and androgynous, in a white shirt, a skinny black tie around her neck, a black jacket draped over one shoulder; the perfect figurehead for a music world that was spinning away from overblown stadium rock tornthe fast and furious three-chord poetry that Smith and her proto-punk New York cohorts were defiantly playing. What really made its mark on Demeulemeester, though, was that she had this intuition—she is a great believer in intuition and fate and the way that life brings people together—"I'm going to know this woman."
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