In the cavernous hush of an industrial space just off the Seine, Maison Margiela (Instagram) returned to the haute couture calendar with a show that was less a debut and more a detonation. Glenn Martens, taking his first bow as creative director of the house’s Artisanal line, delivered a masterclass in emotional tailoring, punk precision, and theatrical restraint. It wasn’t quiet, nor did it pretend to be.
The first sign that this wasn’t business as usual came days earlier, when invitations arrived not as cards but as silver spoons – literally. Heavy, polished, and engraved with the show details, they landed on select doormats with the kind of deliberate irreverence only Margiela can pull off. The message was clear: we are born with nothing, but some of us inherit the codes. And now, Martens is twisting them.
Forget gallant nostalgia. What Martens presented was a collection stitched together with tension: between raw and refined, collapse and control, reverence and rebellion. A woman emerged in a trench made of broken-down leather, wire jutting from the hem like it was trying to escape itself. Another glided by in liquid chiffon, her face hidden behind a veil, her silhouette brutally sliced with Martens’s signature high-cut slits. This was Margiela as séance, but with better lighting and sharper boots.
Martens didn’t abandon the codes; he recharged them. The masks were still there, but behind them: movement, cheek, defiance. His “Glennisms” – trompe-l’œil body prints, thigh-high boots fused into trousers, garments built with adjustable wire framing – gave couture a kind of playful violence. A dress could shift its posture mid-stride. A jacket carried itself like it knew something you didn’t.
What’s most striking is how wearable it all felt, if not literally, then emotionally. Martens isn’t designing for the museum. He’s designing for the woman who smokes her own cigarettes, walks through rain to a dinner party, and doesn’t care if her lace train drags through a puddle. The collection was riddled with that kind of deliberate carelessness: sleeves slashed open just so, fabrics misbehaving on purpose, silhouettes that flirted with unravelling.
There was also wit. One model stomped out in a leather corset over a sheer slip that read more “last woman standing at the afterparty” than “bride.” Another wore a crumpled trench with the poise of a duchess and the energy of someone who could disappear in a nightclub fog at any moment. This is what happens when Martens, known for his irreverent alchemy at Diesel and Y/Project, is given the keys to a house built on secrecy and spectacle.
The references were there for those who needed them: the nods to Galliano, the whispers of Martin’s founding ethos. But more than homage, this felt like a relaunch. A hard reset. Martens didn’t just dip into the archive — he ripped through it, rethreading the house’s DNA through his own muscle memory. It’s couture, yes. But it’s also alive.
And that’s the point. In a fashion week crowded with drama, decadence, and digital gimmickry, Margiela stood still and screamed. With barely a whisper.
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