Tomorrowland founders tap Olivier Theyskens to launch fashion label Boloria

Olivier Theyskens is back in the spotlight with a new fashion house. Boloria, as it is called, has just been created in Antwerp by Belgian entrepreneurs Manu and Michiel Beers, founders of the famous electronic music festival Tomorrowland and owners of the events and lifestyle company Weareone.world.

In addition to the renowned Belgian designer, the two brothers have enlisted the services of Belgian photographer Willy Vanderperre for the launch of this house, “which marks the group’s debut in the fashion world.” As the brand states, Olivier Theyskens’ creative vision “is marked by a timeless visual identity designed by the photographer,” who has long worked with Raf Simons, among others.

Willy Vanderperre signed Boloria’s first corporate campaign, featuring four black-and-white shots that reveal a figure with a hidden face, who could just as easily be a man or a woman, wearing a dark suit with a few couture details highlighted in the construction. “Anticipatory and allusive, expressing an aesthetic language that informs and inspires creativity, these photographs invite interpretation. They open a dialogue, starting a new conversation before the first Boloria collection in 2026, the next step in its history.”

These are essentially the only elements revealed about this new brand, which clearly aligns with the experimental, minimalist style of Belgian fashion. In a press release, the brand underlines this affiliation: “Boloria is based on typically Belgian values — sensitivity, integrity, emotional resonance — which have always inspired Theyskens’ work and approach to fashion.”The company’s Antwerp headquarters are also in line with this approach and ‘an uncompromising quest for beauty.’”

Trained at the La Cambre school in Brussels, Olivier Theyskens launched his own brand in 1997, only to suspend it in 2002. He then moved on to artistic direction roles at Rochas, Nina Ricci, and Theory, followed by a period at Azzaro, accumulating a wealth of experience before relaunching his house in 2016.

Known for his pared-down style tinged with gothic romanticism, it’s his skillset as much as his sensibility that these new fashion players have come to seek out. The press release states that “Boloria represents a new, unique, and long-term collaboration between Theyskens and the Belgian group Weareone.world, the first step in an ongoing partnership for multifaceted creative initiatives.”

In the twenty years since the launch of the Tomorrowland festival in 2005 in the town of Boom near Antwerp, brothers Manu and Michiel Beers have built a global entertainment group, active in “festivals and events, music, experiences, leisure, lifestyle, architecture and interior design, as well as fiction,” with offices in Brazil, France, Thailand, and Ibiza. According to the group’s balance sheet, quoted by Belgian website Les Grandes Fortunes, Weareone.world’s sales reached €244 million in 2024, with a net profit of €23.8 million. The company employs nearly 400 people.