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Maison Martin Margiela
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Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months - Oscar Wilde
StyleZeitgeist Magazine
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Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months - Oscar Wilde
StyleZeitgeist Magazine
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click to enlarge (source: my tumblr / cotonblanc.tumblr.com)
In 1999, a book entitled Street Magazine Maison Martin Margiela Special Volumes 1 & 2 traced the first 10 years of the fashion house that Martin Margiela founded in 1988. By the end of that decade, this Belgian designer from Antwerp had made his mark on the fashion world. His first attempt to penetrate the international market was made as one of a group of six graduates of Antwerp’s Royal Academy of Art. Soon, Margiela stood out as the leading light of the Belgian school. After the success of the Japanese designers in the 70s, it was the Belgians who internationalised fashion design, promulgating their avant-garde vision around the world.
Martin Margiela introduced a new aesthetic that foreshadowed the trends of the 90s, shaking up the fashion system and redefining its principles of communication. His “more-than-meets-the-eye approach” was the opposite of the “show off” attitude of the previous decade, which he had spent working as an assistant to Jean-Paul Gaultier (1984 to 1987). Starting from the premise of recycling old garments, he deconstructs them to restyle them: the outer fabric and the lining are separated to become vest and dress; a patchwork of old scarves forms a pareu to be worn over jeans transformed into skirts or painted white; a jumper is made out of army socks and dresses out of taped-together plastic slipcovers, all with an economy of means which evokes the deprivation of wartime and depression. Margiela dares to include in his collections copies of old clothes with their origin indicated on the label (a rare forthrightness in a profession in which many designers find their inspiration at the flea market but neglect to mention it). But his suits, jackets and coats also show his capacity to rethink a garment’s structure without any external references. He is also a proponent of the poetry of the unfinished. Art Press magazine quotes him as saying, “I love fashion when it is still in the sketch stage.”
Margiela’s fashion show also stray from the traditional, showcasing his designs in unexpected settings such as a vacant lot, the corridors of a disused tube station, the Paris headquarters of the Salvation Army, et cetera. In 1993, as a protest against the artificial routine of semi-annual fashion shows, he organised a sale in an abandoned supermarket of designs chosen from his old collections. In 1994, he replaced the customary runway show with a happening featuring live models in store display windows. In 1997, for an exhibit at the Boijmans Van Beningen Museum in Rotterdam, Margiela installed store-window mannequins outside the building wearing dresses which had undergone biological decomposition. This is typical of the self-effacing attitude of this designer who strives to remain anonymous, proclaiming that “the garment and its wearer are more important than the stylist who designed it”.
In 1998, his appointment as art director of Hermès women’s ready-to-wear drew the attention of the international press. 1999 was marked by the launch of a men’s collection called “10”, a mysterious title in keeping with the image of this celebrity with the unknown face.
Black and white knit jumper with anatomical stitching, vest in broken crockery on metal wire, long skirt made from a pair of jeans, ankle boots inspired by Japanese tabis.
Martin Margiela (1989)
ANDAM: La Mode Contemporaine, STEIDL
text florence müller photography ola bergengren styling mattias karlsson
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At Martin Margiela, the lining is the dress.
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This was after the H&M collaboration came out.Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months - Oscar Wilde
StyleZeitgeist Magazine
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Mr. Margiela is at the moment presenting an exhibition of old clothes at Bukowskis in Stockholm. I went and took some pictures.
"Bukowskis has the great pleasure of presenting an exhibition that showcases a unique collection of pieces by Maison Margiela – some thirty originals from the most revolutionary collections of the 1990s."
Short top without sleeves from white, cropped men's shirt. Cotton.
Collection 0. Circa late 1990s.
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