Maison Martin Margiela

[laughed]

I don't know what to think about the fragrance. I'm kinda mad.
I wanted him to myself, now it seems he's out there for everyone.
Like my ex-girlfriends.

I think it's more about being upset that NOW because people are as someone else said, joining the Margiela facebook page, it is different. It is not the same Margiela. The brand, the name, is now ruined. It's not what it used to be. Why? Just look at the clothing now, look at the perfume. Please. Similar to when great bands put on out their best album before they are famous.
The bottle looks like the Ulrich Lang bottle.
Look at the Helmut Lang brand now. Look at the menswear lol.
Margiela's story is in my mind, a much more tragic story. To tell you the truth, I haven't really come to terms what is going on with Margiela. It just flat out sucks. I know there are people that will feel the exact opposite, but I'm just saying. For me, it sucks.

[nqth]

some info from http://www.mimifroufrou.com/scenteds...itle.html#more

"Martin Margiela initially considered a patchouli composition to tie in with the scent that is diffused in his stores but quickly became interested in the idea of a green fragrance, one that would feel like "a flash of green, as intense as the crack of a whip."

(Untitled) by Maison Martin Margiela was composed by perfumer Daniela Andrier of Givaudan. She describes Margiela as "a poet of clothing" and sees him as a creator who does not transform radically but rather tries to make you see things as if for the first time."

***
I remember seeing a picture of the patchouli scent somewhere some years ago. I am wondering if (or how much) Margiela himself was involved with creating the fragrance. Green is really an old fashioned type of scent (that would be nice to be "re-created") imo. The bottle looks really bad , and they put the name in it.

But whatever the bottle and the name is, it would be bad, tho:)

[pierce]

And not to mention what looks like the artisanal fire sale on yoox.
They now have a video up, where it shows the making of the clothes. Its interesting to see the work being done, but its so crassly presented. The panning shots to the vogue magazine features casually pinned up on the wall at the end of the video made me cringe.

All in all, even in such a bad presentation setting as the yoox site, the clothes still look amazing. If I had the money to hand I would buy the mirror ball top as a collectors piece for my house and the future.

[mononon]

at this point, MMM is on the path to be the next Helmut Lang

[nqth]

from http://www.ablogcuratedby.com/maison...rtin-margiela/
"

Launching in a worldwide exclusive at Colette in Paris next week, (untitled) has been three years in the making, as the first addition to Margiela’s Line 3, dedicated to perfumes. Its ambiguous title sits in harmony with the brand’s philosophy of collective work, anonymity and free interpretation, allowing the scent to hold different meanings for different people.

...

The scent is, as Martin wished, a ‘green flash’ – an olfactory equivalent and translation of the blank canvas and cleansing visual signature ‘white’ of Margiela. It is at once, clean, fresh and astringent, eschewing the floral hallmarks of contemporary perfumes and harking back to 1970’s trends, such as Chanel’s Nº19. Built on a base of galbanum and accented with notes of incense, bitter orange and box green, (untitled) develops with time, the base notes of the scent settling into a deeper, woody aroma of sweet jasmine and musky cedar.

The final chosen scent for (untitled) was selected by Martin himself, and went directly into production by L’Oreal (without market testing) after only three samples were created at Givaudan by Perfumer Daniela Andrier, who muses:

“I know that perfume must not follow a fashion or a trend, but an instinct. This first perfume expresses a femininity which does not fit into formal categories. I am grateful to Maison Martin Margiela for whispering the formula for this perfume into my ear.”

The stunning bottle that holds (untitled) is a collaborative effort between Martin Margiela and creative director Fabien Baron, harking back to medicinal and classical perfumery bottles of the 19th century. All in clear glass, the traditional shape has been dipped in matte white paint (another Margiela signature) and woven with cotton thread around the neck with a single thread holding the stopper. Olivetti typewriter font is used for the name written across the paint, and the stopper is engraved with Margiela’s numerical line codes, that signify the various sectors of clothing, shoes, jewellery accessories and now Line 3 as ‘Margiela’s olfactory universe’.
"

[pierce]

"Its ambiguous title sits in harmony with the brand’s philosophy of collective work"

"I want the perfume "untitled" by martin margiela for valentines day"

Nothing ambiguous in that I think.

[tweeds]

first off let me say i love MMM's products as much as anybody else; to keep going on like this conceptually for 20 years is truly remarkable. but bearing that in mind, some thoughts in response...

In my mind there are three brands in the fashion industry, whose products are so linked to the minds of the designers that it becomes impossible for them to continue any meaningful work without those designers being there.

Margiela, with CdG and Chalayan being the other two.........

this is interesting - whose "mind" are you referring to, that of "Martin Margiela", or that of the Maison? because the house has always stressed that they exist as a collective Maison, there is no single author that a work can be attributable to. if that is so, the work can easily lose the persona "Martin Margiela" without losing the collective mind. perhaps it is us consumers who like to attribute to the individual the (f)act of collective creation?

Look at the Helmut Lang brand now. Look at the menswear lol.
Margiela's story is in my mind, a much more tragic story. To tell you the truth, I haven't really come to terms what is going on with Margiela. It just flat out sucks. I know there are people that will feel the exact opposite, but I'm just saying. For me, it sucks.

i agree i feel a little dismayed, but Lang has an interesting nonchalence in interviews about "losing" his label (i think it was in iD?)... as traditional product life cycle theories will tell us, a product/line has a genesis, peak and decline - inevitable developmental stages. in more informal terms, you can't keep your edge forever. perhaps we should be more concerned about giving due regard to designers willing to step outside like Lang, MMM, Comme, Miyake etc. did in the decades before. to me these houses gave fashion design a believable concept-and-process foundation. Pugh, Bless, BBS for the next 30 years...?

to return to the perfume: i'll buy it if i like it, "Martin" or no "Martin". i find it especially ironic that there are more and more references to the man now than ever. good marketing, if you want to be cynical about it. otherwise there is also Comme's Standard perfume in conjunction with Artek which is looking promising.

[zamb]

this is interesting - whose "mind" are you referring to, that of "Martin Margiela", or that of the Maison? because the house has always stressed that they exist as a collective Maison, there is no single author that a work can be attributable to. if that is so, the work can easily lose the persona "Martin Margiela" without losing the collective mind. perhaps it is us consumers who like to attribute to the individual the (f)act of collective creation?
.

I am referring to the mind of Martin Margiela himself, because the Maison would not exist, without his mind conceiving that having a Maison and doing things way he did was the best way to execute his vision of the type of brand he wanted.
Also, even if the ideas came from others, ultimately his "mind" would have to accept or reject such ideas, before we could see them as works of the Maison...........what we are now seeing, is the works of a Maison, where a "mind" like his, is not making the final decision as to what is produced or left at the decision making/ experimenting table, and thus we are able to recognize the difference, even though its still a collective effort.............

a collective effort will always be as good as the strongest visionary leading the collective!

[tweeds]

Also, even if the ideas came from others, ultimately his "mind" would have to accept or reject such ideas, before we could see them as works of the Maison...

great point. what made MMM really interesting for me was the possibility of a relatively horizontal, non-hierarchical collective, where team members were more than just "limbs" answerable to a "mind". but more than that, the possibility that within the "mind" the different functions such as idea generation, discernment etc could not be ultimately attributed to a single person was very attractive. perhaps for all the Maison's talk of collectivism, the truth was "Martin" was the only important individual. the answer can only come from someone who was working in the house at some point, i suppose.

[zamb]

great point. what made MMM really interesting for me was the possibility of a relatively horizontal, non-hierarchical collective, where team members were more than just "limbs" answerable to a "mind". but more than that, the possibility that within the "mind" the different functions such as idea generation, discernment etc could not be ultimately attributed to a single person was very attractive. perhaps for all the Maison's talk of collectivism, the truth was "Martin" was the only important individual. the answer can only come from someone who was working in the house at some point, i suppose.

well yes, I can agree to a point, but I am not against a hierarchy setup providing that its a just one..........I am not of the school were all ideas, and contributions are equal and should be given equal attention. Some things are more important than others in some ways............ some people are more important than others in some ways, or at least sometimes and I personally don't have a problem with that

[pierce]

"perhaps for all the Maison's talk of collectivism, the truth was "Martin" was the only important individual. the answer can only come from someone who was working in the house at some point, i suppose."

I own and run a company that in our field has won awards for design and we have had relative success in the market. It might be my initial idea for a new product, but I don't for one minute think that its realization would be achievable without the rest of the team and due to the team that it ends up being a certain way. To that end we are all as important as each other.

[ronin]

I thinks that importance is contextual. In a factory, every person is as important as the next, a worker stopping the chain will break the whole thing, but the lead, the soul, the strategy of the product line is more stongly embodied by one person than the others. I don't think someone who executes orders is less important or more replaceable than the person who lead the conceptual vision. If one can't make the stitches correctly, the whole thing will fall apart. In a clothing company that relies entirely on quality, having someone to give a creative vision is not as important as having someone to select the fabrics or perfectly cut it. But in a clothing company that revolves arounc conceptual creativity and innovation, such a person is the most 'important' person because that's what the idea, the core of the company is based one, and if he were to be replaced, it would totally fall apart.

[pierce]

While he/she is important, it still doesn't mean than anyone needs to know anything about this individual other than the product they produce. This is what I liked about Martin Margiela. He knows that he is irrelevant and that the only things that matters is the company's output. Suppose he communicates through the teams output.

[tweeds]

so...the question: if the perfume works, does it matter whether Diesel owns MMM? and whether Margiela is at the helm?

[pierce]

How a clothes designer claims to know anything about perfume and can walk into a laboratory of trained experts and say something like "I want a flash of green" and be taken serious is beyond me. Which is why I think a perfume was never released until he had left.