She hasn’t quite unpacked yet. The furniture in the living room looks settled and the cupboards in the kitchen are full but the bedroom is chaos, albeit organized. “I don’t know if I will find all my vintage,” she apologizes. “A lot of my clothes are still in boxes.” She tries the wardrobe first. The mechanism of the doors must have given way a long time ago – perhaps during the move – because they are held shut by a rather primordial yet effective sliding concoction. “I have to fix this,” she says as she swiftly drops the stick to the floor and we watch how the doors hinge forward. All in due time I’m sure. It’s only been a few months since Delfine sold her big house and found smaller, more appropriate quarters for a single girl. “Just when I moved in here, I got back with my ex-boyfriend and now it’s too small!” she laughs. “But it’s OK. We’re happy here.”

The boyfriend in question is Arend (which translates in English to ‘Eagle’), a 33-year old dancer she fell in love with three years ago. She was still living in New York at the time but he whisked her back to the homeland, where she continued to work as a model and an actress, both terms she has some difficulty with. “I don’t know why exactly,” she thinks. “I still can’t say of myself: “I am an actress; I am a model”. Maybe because it doesn’t feel like a real job to me. Or maybe because it makes me feel claustrophobic. It sounds so definite.” To me, and to the many other people who have supported her now and in the past, there is no doubt she is both. At some point in 2001 Delfine Bafort was the hottest ticket in town. She had just shot French Vogue alongside Kate Moss with photographer Mario Testino (who discovered her during a shoot at Cafe d’Anvers for Italian Vogue) and life as she knew it, as a young Flemish girl living in the safe haven of Belgium, was over. She was one of a regiment of Belgian girls in New York who conquered the fashion world just before 9/11 – they were cool, tom-boyish, cheeky and fun – until the Brazilian bombshells took over.

Delfine made the switch to acting when her boyfriend at the time, Felix Van Groeningen, the Oscar-nominated Director for The Broken Circle Breakdown, cast her in one of his first feature films ‘Steve & Sky‘. “He wrote that character Sky for me,” she recalls, “and he was the first Director who believed in me. I enjoyed every minute of that working process. That was my switch!” She also worked on a controversial film with her friend Vincent Gallo. “Unfortunately ‘Promises Written in Water‘ was never released,” she shrugs. “It was selected at the film festival of Venice and Toronto. I would like to see the film again, so I’m hoping Vincent will bring it out some day.” (As it so happens I saw Vincent in Los Angeles a few months ago and he told me he was going to release the film soon because he thought “Delfine was so great in that movie!”) Fingers crossed.

At first glance it looks like any other wardrobe: clothes, on hangers. But with further inspection, and to the shocking surprise of Delfine herself, we realize that she’s hung up entire outfits! There are dozens of combinations of vintage button-down shirts with V-neck sweaters and oversized cardigans, suspended like ready-made solutions. “It is ME hanging in my closet!” she cracks up. “Probably when I hang my clothes back in my closet, I just worn it like that. Maybe it is combined with a feeling. A particular blouse with a cardigan for a mood moment…” But I make another startling observation: the top half of her outfits is undeniably masculine, while the bottom half is feminine and sexy. She wears high wasted skirts with cardigans and boots, like a school uniform. “This is how I feel most of the time,” she concludes. “Black and white. Masculine and feminine. Heart and head.” What’s also remarkable is that most her wardrobe is vintage – Delfine loves the 70s! – and that she purges her closet every three years to make room for an entirely new set of clothes. “I am a very impulsive person,” she explains. “I like changes in life. I want to reinvent myself over and over again. To start over with a clear mind. I often get rid of all my clothes but yet my ‘new’ clothes will be very, very similar. I’ll get rid of it because of an internal feeling. Restlessness is a part of who I am.”

There is one other urgent matter to attend to. Our mutual friend Inge is throwing her 40th birthday party – the reason I am in Belgium until now – and we both need a costume. The theme is “Glam Rock”, which I interpret as David Bowie, in his glitter days, with stacked platform boots and colorful bell sleeve shirts. Confused and insecure, Delfine and I agree that we’ll be OK as long as we sparkle somehow. She takes me to her favorite vintage store across town, Think Twice to find the appropriate attire. She buys a floral gown “that will do”. But we don’t fare so well in the end. Everyone but us had opened the pdf with reference photos Inge had distributed and showed up in black and gold 80s outfits… We sparkled alright but in the wrong era…