Glenn Martens’ Margiela Is Great Product — for Nerds
Glenn Martens’ debut year as Maison Margiela’s creative director has been defined by not-so-subtle nods to the house’s illustrious past and a similarly obvious willingness to break protocol, as evidenced by stunts like the christening of the first Margiela celebrity. But through it all, there's been a single understated throughline.
Martens' closing act of the year is a holiday campaign that illustrates the hidden power of his Margiela, with 18 images quietly dedicated to the new Margiela's genuinely good clothes. Not that the "old" Margiela wasn't wearable, of course, but Martens' work is marked by distinctly grounded fare.
There's a trim pair of washed jeans, wearable and classic, and a generous beige trench that's quite classic even when its loose sleeve explodes into silky interior lining.
And a formerly straightforward bangle, a mainstay in Margiela's jewelry offering, is warped around itself to create an imminently approachable new shape that's nonetheless anything but ordinary.
“Margiela created a school of thinking,” Glenn Martens noted back in 2018, then a fresh-faced designer earning comparisons with his fellow countryman. Now, the well-documented Margiela admirer is setting the curriculum for that school, and his astute knowledge of the house is visible in more than just clothes.
Take the confetti swirling around models in the campaign. After all, at defining moments for the brand, there is always confetti.
Small paper strips were thrown from models’ pockets during Margiela’s Spring/Summer 1990 show, a paradigm-shifting moment where the brand’s founder laid out his radically democratic vision of upcycled and de/reconstructed clothing. Confetti then appeared regularly throughout the line’s collections, covering the floor in Margiela’s 1995 exhibition in Brussels or upcycled and stuck onto Tabi boots for FW03. Then, in Martin Margiela’s final show for his eponymous brand, 20 years after its founding, silver confetti rained from the sky.
Confetti is flying again, but it's introducing a new era of good clothes.
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