July 10, 2025 |
Glenn Martens promised his first Artisanal show for Maison Margiela would be loud and, true to his word, he turned up his creative decibels, delivering a tour-de-force debut.
Guests headed to an industrial basement on the edge of Paris and stepped into a space lined with peeling posters featuring photocopied elements of interior architecture, to witness a show that explored themes of decay, destruction and deconstruction.
Martens honoured the history of the house, founded by the fame-avoidant Belgian genius, Martin Margiela, whose ideas of beauty reshaped fashion in the Nineties and Noughties. Maison Margiela has always stood in opposition to conventions. So when the conventions of couture demand perfect beauty, polish and high spending glamour, Margiela offers more challenging ideas.
Models paraded in gowns made from what looked like the clear plastic garment bags used for dry cleaning. Coats were pieced together from embossed leather, resembling peeling antique wallpaper. Some looks appeared rusted and encrusted with dirt, as if they’d just been dug up. Others looked gorgeously ghostly, with models swathed in pale draped jersey gowns, torsos tightly cinched by sculptural corsets to look like gothic medieval princesses raised from the dead.
Zombie couture? That idea was reinforced by the cordyceps-style bead-encrusted face covering worn by every model (if you’ve watched The Last of Us, you’ll know). Masked models was a tradition started by the founder who wanted people to look at his clothes, not the girls showing them off. Martens used it to unsettling effect here, with some masks made from battered plate metal as if fragments of a car crash.
There was a sense that the brooding Belgian soul of the brand had come home to roost with Martens. He spoke of growing up in the gloomy gothic city of Bruges and took inspiration from the ‘Nature Morte’ tradition of Dutch still life paintings of game. Intensely worked textures were created by layering couture techniques with unconventional processes (some of the metal masks were made by specialist car body welders).
Martens also spoke of following not just one but two great designers, with his show coming just 18 months after John Galliano presented his thrilling, era-defining ‘broken dolls’ Artisanal show.
“Martin changed the way we look at clothes. So it’s a massive honour and very humbling experience to be part of the house, and of course coming after John Galliano, the biggest couturier in history, is even more humbling”, acknowledged Martens. He rose to the occasion. Margiela is his now.
Photography courtesy of Maison Margiela.
