Maison Martin Margiela by Glenn Martins

Aluminium silhouettes covered in translucent PVC, echoing the relics of an infante’s wardrobe re-engineered for the twenty-first century, shifting sky-blue jeans with whitewashed pockets... “I want it all! I want it all!” whispered a fashion madonna in the front rows  At Le Centquatre, transformed into a series of reception rooms, and with walls covered with crumpled paper boards, trompe l'œil or not – some printed with candlesticks – the spectators were mesmerized as Glenn Martens’s first Maison Martin Margiela fashion show unfolded. Born in Bruges, this former graduate of the Royal Academy of Antwerp masters the essence of the Martin Margiela style with prodigious virtuosity.

In a single show, it seems that the artistic director of Diesel, appointed to head the fashion house last January, had rebooted the spirit of a master to whom he paid homage without deference or nostalgia. From corsets to nude drapes, he even incorporated quotes from John Galliano’s last show, projecting them into new spaces. With a prodigious ability to hybridise the everyday; to carve a princess dress out of a bin bag; to give the discarded a magician's pirate finery. There he was, cutting jackets from Cordoba leather and blowing hundreds of crumpled silk pouches onto sheaths in sublime gradations of pinks and quicksand; these were evening gowns worthy of a fairytale where ghosts assume a celestial dimension.  A crumpled gold lamé taffeta twisted endlessly, oe a coat that seemed to be made of old nautical charts assembled one by one – all a meditation on time, on memory and its preservation, on the ugly that becomes beautiful under the hand and the lively mind. A correspondence between wear and tear and the future made as invisible as the faces behind the masks.

Are these masks also necessary in an age when hiding one’s face is no longer a luxury, but a form of renunciation and submission to all kinds of fanaticism?  The eye focuses on what is moving forward, like a series of embodied chimeras. The effect of origami, celestial handkerchiefs, cut-outs imitating birds, feathers that aren't feathers at all – art is born of transformation and the ability to give back to reality its share of fiction and play. As evidenced by the multicoloured balloons bursting like ripe fruit to the strains of champagne that greeted guests as they made their exit. 

L.B