Haider Ackermann

Who is Haider Ackermann?

Haider Ackermann is a Colombian designer of ready-to-wear fashion.

Born in Bogotá, Colombia in 1971, he was adopted at the age of nine months by a French Alsatian family. His adoptive father is a mapmaker. Haider Ackermann spent his childhood in Ethiopia, Chad, Algeria and France before the family moved to the Netherlands.

Inspired by the work of Yves Saint Laurent, he went to Belgium in 1994 and took courses in fashion design at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp. After five months of internship with John Galliano, he worked as an assistant to one of his teachers, the Belgian designer Wim Neels. In the following years he worked for various brands, including Bernhard Willhelm and Patrick Van Ommeslaeghe before working as a designer for Mayerline.

In 2001 Ackermann created his own label and presented his first women's wear collection in March 2001 during Paris fashion week. His 2002 collection drew the attention of house Ruffo, premium leather clothing specialist, which hired him to direct the spring-summer collections and autumn-winter 2003 for Ruffo Research. In 2005 he signed with the Belgian group bvba 32 and set up his studio in Paris.

Ackermann was one of the designers approached to succeed Galliano at Dior, after declining the proposed succession of Martin Margiela. Karl Lagerfeld saw him to be his ideal successor at Chanel, and some commentators called him a "new Yves Saint-Laurent".