The Maison Margiela (Instagram) Spring-Summer 2024 Collection is a testament to the passing on and evolution of fashion across generations. This is a story of inherited wardrobes evolving, adapting, and reflecting individual truths. Creative Director John Galliano delights in showing how in the gap between eras, individuals breathe life into a narrative that spans generations.
The collection’s story begins with a projection of a transatlantic ship towering over a twentieth-century English port city, foreshadowing what’s to come. Onboard, a chance meeting between the parents of Count and Hen sets the stage: one, an heir to an impoverished aristocratic lineage, and the other, a scion of a pretentious industrial family. This encounter lays the foundation for a collection rooted in their voyage’s ambiance, the characters, and a cargo of clothing trunks destined for their future descendants.
The collection celebrates the generational impulse for customization, an idea that very much aligns with contemporary truths. Dresses feature a unique technique called “exfoliage,” where the top layer of the bustier is removed, revealing the inner construction, lowered over the skirt, and laminated with a relief effect. This mirrors the pressage technique of pressage, laminating dresses and shirts across drapes and creases, creating unvarnished reliefs, as if shaped by the pressure of a suitcase. Shiny bow fragments and spontaneous customizations with tape or work-in-progress stitching further showcase the spirit of adaptation.
Blazers, inspired by sportswear draped nonchalantly around the neck, evoke the body language of mauvais garçons from archival imagery. They reflect the unconscious gestures we naturally make while wearing garments – the shrug of a jacket, the pocket’s sag, and the hem’s wrinkles. The collection also explores Rorschach cutting, evolving into Rorschach dotting in an organza skirt treated with printed pied de poule, echoed in a velour coat.
Outerwear and suits blend masculine and feminine elements, with coats featuring sculptural basques. Dancing-hem culottes reimagine mid-century dresses, evident in denim car coats and maritime collar-adorned coats. Tabi brogues and Tabi spectator shoes take various forms, while bags and hats play with Rorschach dots and mid-century shapes.
Maison Margiela’s Spring-Summer 2024 Collection is a journey through time and style and a perfect tribute to times both past and present.
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