Maison Martin Margiela autumn—winter 1994—95. Garment from a doll’s wardrobe enlarged 5.2 times to human size.
Margiela may be an avant-gardist par excellence, but he finds inspiration in the past, reusing old clothes, as well as doing traditional couture work.
Margiela is fascinated not only by the structure of the garments, but also by their history. His extensive use of ‘recovered’ items in his collections has earned him the ‘grunge’ label. Recovery challenges the authenticity of the creation. His ‘flea-market style’ is, in fact, a sophisticated study of traditional tailoring. The difference between Margiela and grunge is that he does not take up old clothes indiscriminately, but does something with them: he recycles them. Margiela restructures the form of the pieces with cut-outs or darts, and dyes them to change colours and patterns. He gives the old, rejected and condemned clothes a new life. Old clothes have an emotional meaning for him, they are witnesses of the past, of life itself. The fact that the ‘new’ old clothes are not always finished (an unsewn hem or a frayed seam) is intentional, because what is unfinished can continue to evolve. The effect is extremely powerful. ‘Recovered’ clothes have an intrinsic value. The garments are unique items — pièces uniques — works of art. That is reflected in the melancholic, untraditional fabrics and the subtle harmony between the materials, colours and light. ‘Pièces uniques’ belong in haute couture and in that sense Martin Margiela comes (very) close to haute couture, even though his is a ‘dissident’ approach.
His passion for old clothes is so extreme that he creates replicas. He observes the exact proportions, sometimes even disproportions of old, hand-made and made-to-measure garments. In that way the deceased wearers of the clothes live on to some extent. He calls replicas ‘reproductions of a series of old garments’. Martin Margiela sees the replicas as ‘original’ pieces, not as designer reinterpretations, as is the case with recycled clothing. As a fashion joke for his Winter collection for 1994-95, he made replicas of Barbie clothes, but enlarged 5.2 times, to human proportions. He adhered to the same sleeve details, finish and relative size of the press studs. The result was a somewhat disconcerting silhouette.
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