MAISON MARTIN MARGIELA is a brand which is famous for its progressive aesthetic and enigmatic approach.
During a long time this label was beloved by fashion insiders, but somehow relatively under the radar of the masses.
Martin Margiela was born in Hasselt, Belgium in 1957. He studied fashion design at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp followed by a three-year apprenticeship with Jean-Paul Gaultier (1984-1987). He established the Maison Martin Margiela in Paris in 1988, together with Jenny Meirens, a boutique owner.
Deconstructivist Designer Margiela
Margiela was probably one of the few designers in the early 2000s whose work could be described as deconstructive.
During a long time this label was beloved by fashion insiders, but somehow relatively under the radar of the masses.
Martin Margiela was born in Hasselt, Belgium in 1957. He studied fashion design at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp followed by a three-year apprenticeship with Jean-Paul Gaultier (1984-1987). He established the Maison Martin Margiela in Paris in 1988, together with Jenny Meirens, a boutique owner.
Deconstructivist Designer Margiela
Margiela was probably one of the few designers in the early 2000s whose work could be described as deconstructive.
MAISON MARTIN MARGIELA
In his first winter collection, displayed in 1988, shards from broken plates were worked into shirts. Plastic shopping bags were cut to form tee-shirts and held together with brown cellophane tape. In the summer 1991 collection secondhand ball gowns from the 1950s were dyed gray and given new life as waistcoats; old jeans and denim jackets were reworked to become elegant full-length coats.
INSIDE OUT
Margiela was engaged in 1997 as the in-house designer for Hermès, one of the greatest luxury houses of France, with an established reputation for quality and finishing. Margiela succeeded in further developing the achievements of his characteristic investigations into tailoring, although he worked entirely in line within the Hermès atmosphere and tradition.
The most noteworthy detail in Margiela's clothing was the nameless, somewhat oversized white label, identifiable on the outside of the garment by four white stitches attaching its corners. All the lines (except first mainline for women) were printed with a numbers from 0 to 23 and the relevant number was circled. Margiela's refusal to supply his designs with a brand name produced the opposite effect, a selected in-crowd recognized his "brand."
Margiela Label
Tabi boot - a Japanese-inspired shoe in the form of a hoof reappeared with each new season in slightly modified form. Margiela reworked many existing garments into new creations, but he also repeated the most "successful items"-or favorite pieces from previous collections. This method led to the evolution of different lines, each of which was given a number that referred to differences in content, working method, and technique.
Tabi boot
Work for Hermes
