Haider Ackerman was born in Santa Fe de Bogota, Colombia. His family is French and he spent his childhood in Ethiopia, in Tchad, in France, in Algeria and then in the Netherlands.
After getting his high school graduation diploma, he moved to Antwerp to study styling at the worldwide known Fine Arts Academy. As a student, Haider Ackerman worked 5 months at John Galliano as an intern and then became his assistant in the preparation of the shows for two consecutive seasons. After 3 years at the Fine Arts Academy, he stopped his studies to work as the assistant of Belgian designer Wim Neels, his former teacher. Haider Ackerman focused on both Womens- and Menswear collections.
Haider Ackerman then had several different shorter professional experiences: he followed drapery lessons, worked as a buyer for a shop in Antwerp (selling designers such as Helmut Lang, Hussein Chalayan, etc...) and worked as a seller for Patrick van Ommeslaeghe at his commercial showroom in Paris. He also worked as a " concept designer " for Mayerline's womenswear collection (commercial experience)
This is when he showed his drawings and expressed the concept of his personal collection to Raf Simons, that the latter introduced Haider Ackerman to Kuki de Salvertes of Girault Totem. Haider Ackermann presented his first Womenswear Collection in 2002 in Paris.
