spring-ready-to-wear 2009
Maison Martin Margiela Collection
September 29, 2008
Maison Martin Margiela RTW Spring 2009
He insists otherwise, but if the rumors turn out to be true and the 20th anniversary collection that Martin Margiela showed on Monday night was his last, the invisible man left his disciples with enough enigmatic nostalgia to keep them entertained for another 20 years. Whether it was his final word or not, the show was a retrospective or sorts. Indeed, Margiela worked one of his conceits — recycled material — here, all his own. He started at the very beginning — that iconic white lab coat that doubles as house uniform — and led into the first jacket shown in spring 1989. Literally? Please. First, it appeared as a photograph on a silk dress; a plaster-mold version followed. And the concepts just kept on coming.
True to Margiela form, this runway had little to wear — although those clothes do exist — but lots of ideas, big and small. Proportion played out in shoulders, from sloping to linebacker, shoes too big and too small, and silhouettes that either swallowed the body or shrunk into it. Also on the hit parade: plastic bags, disco balls, catsuits, Barbie clothes, AIDS T-shirts and the house obsession with anonymity — all of the models were faceless. Instead of exact replicas, Margiela rewrote his own language, and the crowd ate it up with ample applause.
It all added to the party atmosphere, and, remember, fun was not always part of Margiela’s repertoire. He has lightened up from the house’s serious intellectual beginnings, and, here, his wicked wit was overt in the clothes and the way he showed them. He poked fun at his own more commercial nature, wheeling some looks out on individually sized stages. One featured a model framed by a jewel box, a spotlight shone directly on a necklace from the fall 2008 debut jewelry collection, while another illuminated the mannequin’s sequined sandaled feet. By the time two killer pairs of legs walked out under a giant silk birthday cake, it felt like, for once, we were in on the joke.
Timeline: Maison Martin Margiela
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- Maier, Tomas
- Malandrino, Catherine
- Mansell, Kevin
- Marant, Isabel
- Marciano, Maurice
- Marciano, Paul
- Margiela, Martin
- Markfield, Roger S
- Marras, Antonio
- McCartney, Stella
- McCollough, Jack
- McComb, William L
- McQueen, Alexander
- Mendel, Gilles
- Meyrowitz, Carol
- Miele, Carlos
- Miller, Nicole
- Mischka, James
- Missoni, Angela
- Mizrahi, Isaac
- Montgomery, R Lawrence
- Moralioglu, Erdem
- Mulleavy, Kate
- Mulleavy, Laura
- Murphy, Glenn
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