Martin Margiela Retrospective, 1989-2009 at the Palais Galliera, Paris
This exhibition is part of the “Saison Margiela 2018 à Paris”, as is also the exhibition “Margiela les années Hermès” (22 March – 2 September 2018) at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs (MAD). Share
Margiela/ Gallira, 1989-2009
This exhibition, the first retrospective in Paris devoted to Belgian fashion designer Martin Margiela, traces the career, from spring-summer 1989 to spring-summer 2009, of a designer who not only questioned the structure of garments but also challenged the structure of the fashion system.
Martin Margiela (b. Louvain, 1957) graduated from the fashion department of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Antwerp, in 1980. After a stint as Jean Paul Gaultier’s assistant between 1984 and 1987, he was associated with the Antwerp school and became the only Belgian designer of his generation to found his own fashion house in Paris.
Margiela’s conceptual approach challenged the fashion aesthetics of his time. He pushed the scale of a garment to extremes, enlarging the proportions to 200% in his “Oversize Collection”, for example, or by adapting dolls’ clothes to the life-size human form in the “Barbie Collection”.
Margiela remains the creator without a face, the man who does not do interviews, and whose clothes came with a plain white label bereft of any brand-name. This man who promotes anonymity is famous, not only for his use of white, a colour that he espoused in a multitude of shades, but also for holding his défilés in unusual venues: in car-parks, warehouses, a metro station, or on waste ground.
Exhibition Dates: 3 March – 15 July, 2018
Address: 10 Avenue Pierre Ier de Serbie, Paris 75016
