Founded in 2006, WBDM is a public agency set up with the aim of supporting designers and companies in the fashion and design industry to export their know-how abroad, thereby showcasing Belgian know-how.

Since its inception, WBDM has participated in Milan Design Week, the industry’s premier event, every year.

In January 2024, WBDM will participate in the Maison & Objet fair for the 15th time, with a collective physical booth.

These meetings between publishers and designers are an encounter and confrontation between the international production realities and the emerging, albeit confirmed, design in Belgium.

From 2010 to 2016, the Showroom [Les Belges] programme supported fashion designers through collective appearances at the Paris and Milan fashion weeks.

Belgium is Design promotes Belgian design on the international scene. This programme of international collective initiatives was set up with the partner institutions of WBDM: Flanders DC for Design and MAD – Home of Creators.

In 2012, WBDM presented an exhibition “Belgian Design on Tour” at the Liège Design Biennale, Reciprocity.

For the 2015 and 2018 editions, the support for the event took the form of enhancing its international communication and inviting foreign journalists.

Set up in 2011, Belgian Spirit was an initiative of the three regions of Belgium, which chose the Business of Design Week (BoDW) in Hong Kong as its launch pad for the Asian continent, for fashion, design and architecture.

WBDM has been a member of BEDA – The Bureau of European Design Associations since 2014.

Since 2015, WBDM has conducted 188 interviews with fashion and design professionals: designers, but also consultants, artists, journalists, gallery owners and photographers. 

Read the most inspiring interviews.

2016 marked the 10th anniversary of Wallonie-Bruxelles Design Mode.

Conscious of offering adequate support to a wider variety of brand profiles, WBDM launched the Fashion Programme.

WBDM edited two directories of Belgian designers:

In 2017 “Designers from Belgium“, a book showcasing 35 designers from Wallonia and Brussels, was published. This book is a promotional tool for prospecting among international design brands (furniture, objects, textiles) and among the press.

For the “Textiles Revealed” exhibition presented at New York Textile Month in September 2019, WBDM, in collaboration with Flanders DC and MAD-Home of creators, produced a publication featuring 50 established and emerging textile designers working in Belgium: “Designers from Belgium – Textile edition”. 200 copies were distributed during the week in New York, and it is still being distributed among professionals.

The Brussels Design Museum (at the time called ADAM) invited WBDM to participate in Intersections, the contemporary design biennial.

The “Design Generations” exhibition invited visitors to take a fresh look at design, by highlighting the far-reaching value of this profession, which over the last century has borne witness to and often advocated changes in our society. Ten design offices from Wallonia and Brussels explained their approach through a selection of products from the past (the museum’s permanent collection), the present (their current output) and the future (an imaginary product).

WBDM collaborates every year in the organisation of the Belgian Fashion Awards with the magazines Vif Weekend/ Knack, Flanders DC and MAD – Home of Creators.

Through Belgium is Design, WBDM presented “Textiles Revealed“, an exhibition of the work of 11 Belgian textile designers, organised in collaboration with Li Edelkoort and Philip Fimmano as part of New York Textile Month.

2021 marks the 15th anniversary of Wallonie-Bruxelles Design Mode (WBDM).

Berlin, 21 June 2022. The first truly transnational alliance of European fashion councils and institutions is founded by 25 European fashion organisations to build a beautiful, sustainable and inclusive European fashion ecosystem.