There is magic at work in these early years. Maybe it’s because she drew her inspiration from stories of magic and possibility. Most notable was her collection based on Virginia Woolf’s Orlando, a satire of a gender-switching, superhuman heroine that creates poetry over centuries across all forms. It was also a thinly veiled love-letter to a doomed queer romance between Woolf and the writer Vita Sackville-West. The androgyny and romanticism in that story is something Demeulemeester designed with in every collection. Her clothes are made for lovers who share each other’s clothes. It works—most of my former lovers and I have stolen each other’s Ann silks, for a time, not only because we loved merging with each other but we loved how easy it was to do with Demuelemeester as armor against the rest of the world. The best of Ann makes everything fit so easily, even if it took years of heartbreak and repetition to do just so. Just like love, I suppose.

And just like the keepsakes of a doomed romance, it’s actually the most delicate pieces she worked on that seem to have made the most long-lasting mark. Her sheer garments with lyrical embroidery are among her most memorable works. They are now museum pieces, archived with the fervor of poets interpreting Sappho. “Curious wishes feathered the air” inscribed clothes peppered with beads and floating tulle. There are long white skirts with lines from Patti Smith’s “Woolgathering,” beaded in red along the belt. A mesh silk top whispered, “into a realm that could not be measured” as early as 2000. It’s a technique Meunier has clearly carried over with success. He’s continuing to make clothes designed for lovers—the glossy tailcoats and leather harnesses of his latest collection would look gorgeous and dangerous on anyone.

In one of the last shows she designed herself, Ann returned to the source material that made her creations so romantic and imminently wearable: the poet Rimbaud, and the poem A Season in Hell. She created a woman persona based on his own travels. I remember a single line: “I sat beauty down on my lap, and I found her galling.”

She remarked after that show that if Rimbaud had been alive today, he would have been a rock star. Tim Blanks responded that Rimbaud would have likely been a Demeulemeester customer. When I hear BTS and their army of fans screaming with delight, I suspect they’d both be right. But the role of rock-star Demeulemeester muse is occupied at the moment, and to great effect, too. I’m sure nobody minds. The fangirls sure don’t.