The Margiela artisanal show began in darkness. One that offered a blank slate—or a black hole—for the potential that lay before it. And Glenn Martens’s debut certainly seized that potential. The Belgian designer is the third creative director in the house’s history, and his is the first artisanal collection since the instantly canonized spring 2024 performance—no small task for an intensely loved and protected legacy.
While lights rose on the papier-mâché-effect walls, layered prints of wallpaper and pictures of molding, peeling from some far-off imagined decay, were revealed. Lean too forcefully or look too closely and the illusion could crumble to dust. Underneath the rubble? A potential trove of design—a hint offered by the invite in the form of a vintage spoon, which was excavated from floral paper on the house’s Instagram.
The setting, and the collection, proposed a feeling of antiquity, loosely attached to their beginnings and fragile from the passage of time. The enveloping masks, which adorned every one of the models’ faces and directly called back to the house’s first show for spring 1989, brought Margiela’s origins back to life. Some were made from soldered metals, others from tulle or thickly encrusted jewels. They may have enshrouded the wearer and nodded to Martin Margiela’s perpetual mission of anonymity, but to an onlooker, they deserved closer inspection, even just to appreciate the artistic preposterousness of transforming the models into a Man in the Iron Mask in the Parisian summer heat.
The first look was a bold, plastic statement—a clear gown with excess material bustled in the skirt and hands tucked inside the pockets, forming a see-through muff effect and a nod to the fall 1998 collection. The plastic motif continued, both over otherwise nude bodies and squarely hung over the shoulders of stiffly painted, beautiful creations. Crassly, they were not unlike a couture dry cleaning bag, or more elegantly, a vacuum-sealed shell that protected what was underneath.
Balance was found in the extremes. From full and almost jarring transparency, the collection deftly dove into ruched liquid metallic gowns that created sweeping, cocooning, and alien-like shapes. Though this is Martens’s first “official” couture debut, the materials were immediately a reminder of his runway collaboration with Jean Paul Gaultier couture—one that never really got the limelight it deserved as the world edged out of the pandemic. Thankfully, here it was again in its full mind-warping glory.
Certain pieces were exaggeratedly burdened with embellishment, so richly bejeweled it was like staring directly into a treasure chest. The transparent weight of the artistry was visible, too; the models swayed while completing their walks. Elsewhere, two fully shrouded looks composed an eerie illusion of nudity that somehow felt as constricting as the heavy jewels. On the other side, wispy tulle garments hovered around the body, painting a halo of illusory images, many referencing the painterly signature of Gustave Moreau. The overlay was additionally reminiscent of John Galliano’s artisanal spring 2017 collection, where windswept tulle faces, sculpted by Benjamin Shine, floated down the runway.
However, on this journey through opposites, truly breathtaking beauty was found in the crumbling in-between. Heavy, peeling leather jackets lumbered down the runway—again, an homage to the artisanal destruction of Martin. Under the couture detritus there was a gesture so slight, it unequivocally brought the clothes to life: red paint-dipped fingers poked through a slit to hold the jackets closed, as if for a mere stroll on a brisk day.
Other sudden breaks in the complex designs appeared. There was a pair of painted “light wash jeans” with cowboy boots and a bare chest under a suit vest. Everything was crafted to couture standards and the pendulum never stopped swinging.
The collection finished with a chartreuse gown whose ruffled top and garden-like mask formed a vibrant exclamation point to a show-stopping debut almost overrun with ideas. If there was any uncertainty that Martens could succeed on such a stage, all traces were immediately dispelled. The designer flourished under the spotlight, bringing a long-awaited “wow” factor back to the scene.
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