Fashion. Not exactly the first thing that springs to mind when Electrabel is mentioned. And yet Electrabel is one of the partners in the ModeNatie fashion centre. The connection between Electrabel and fashion is closer than you think.

The links between the City of Antwerp, the mixed intermunicipal companies that supply it with electricity and Electrabel go back for many years. When it became known that the Flanders Fashion Institute wanted the building on Nationalestraat for its ModeNatie project, Electrabel was immediately interested. This building was for many years the administrative headquarters of ‘Verenigde Energiebedrijven van het Scheldeland’, known as EBES in short. In 1991 EBES was one of the Belgian power companies that merged to form Electrabel. So there are the historical links.

There are also parallels between the development of the partners. Flemish fashion has set out to be international in scope, and that is how Electrabel too positions itself. Electrabel has set itself the objective of becoming an energy supplier on a European scale in the next few years. Through ModeNatie, fashion activities abroad have the potential to promote Electrabel’s brand recognition in other countries.

A third factor is creativity. The link between fashion and creativity is self-evident, but for a company such as Electrabel it is not quite so obvious. Nevertheless, Electrabel wants to be attractive as a company, as can be seen in various ways. One link with the creative aspect of fashion was the Electrabel calendar for 2001, for which various fashion designers were asked to create something ‘energetic’. The result was indeed astonishing, to the extent that the calendar featured in several fashion publications. Proof if any is needed that a subject such as energy appeals not just to the technical imagination!

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