in 1999. Verhelst worked with the artist Jim Dine, and draws inspiration from singer Patti Smith. She worked on a clothing line inspired by Jackson Pollock. In June 2013, her parent company 32 BVBA, which also housed designer Haider Ackermann, split into independent brands. In November 2013, Verhelst announced she was leaving the fashion house. The exit letter also explained that the brand will show its autumn/winter 2014 men's and women's collection together at February's Paris Fashion Week. Following her departure, Ann Verhelst choose herself the French designer Sébastien Meunier as her successor as artistic director of the brand. Sébastien Meunier had previously worked for 10 years with the Belgian fashion genius Martin Margiela before joining Ann Demeulemeester in 2010, officially for designing the house's men's collections while in reality being trained by Ann Verhelst and Patrick Robyn themselves to his future position of artistic director. The Demeulemeester label "operates freestanding stores in Antwerp, Hong Kong and Tokyo, and wholesales to an array of international retailers including Saks Fifth Avenue and Barneys New York in America, L’Eclaireur and Le Bon Marché in Paris and Lane Crawford and Joyce in Hong Kong." Ann Demeulemeester Serax After leaving fashion, Verhelst attended porcelain master classes in England and France. In 2019, she launched Ann Demeulemeester Serax in collaboration with Belgian diffusion label Serax, a collection of affordable porcelain dinner services hand-painted in China, but also silverware, glasses and larger houseware, following the path of other famous fashion designers of the like of Inès de la Fressange, José Levy or Christian Lacroix Antonioli After the Italian retailer Claudio Antonioli bought the company in 2020 and after the resignation of Sébastien Meunier, Ann Verhelst announced, in September 2021, her return to the Ann Demeulemeester label, therefore forever linking her name and legacy to Claudio Antonioli, whose name is mainly associated with the rise of luxury streetwear. That same month, the brand's Antwerp flagship store reopened after a year of renovation, drawing back to the minimalist aesthetic, originally conceived by the famed Belgian architects duo Robbrecht en Daem, the store itself now being mostly focused on the Ann Demeulemeester Serax homeware and furnitures collections rather than on the fashion collections, confirming the brand's smart transition from a "Fashion House" to a "Lifestyle Brand". In the meantime, Belgian national newspaper De Tijd revealed that 42 out of the 48 Antwerp-based employees of Ann Demeulemeester had been dismissed,