Byronesque, the contemporary vintage brand that focuses on selling collectors’ archives and reviving dormant brands, recently held a sale in Paris of 150 pieces designed by Martin Margiela between 1989 and 2006. They were sold from a very Margiela-esque apartment in the Palais Royal, with an all-white interior draped in cotton sheeting. Byronesque CEO and editor in chief Gill Linton couldn’t have found a more evocative setting if she’d tried—save for perhaps going to Martin Margiela’s old Parisian atelier/showroom, which was…all white with cotton sheeting draped over everything.
The sale, Martin Margiela: Not an Auction, for the People, was made up of the collection of a single woman: Christina Ahlers. Ahlers is a fashion executive who worked with Margiela for many years (and who, incidentally, is third left and second row from the top in Annie Leibovitz’s iconic image of the Margiela team from Vogue September 2008). Ahlers felt it was time to let it all go—or at least, let most of it go. Some pieces she held back because, well, because; the clothing we wore yesterday can still have an inexorable hold today. This set us thinking: What stories are you telling when you let your past go; when you’re selling someone’s past, both that of a designer and the person who owned the clothes; and when you buy that past to make it your own?
Well, we’re about to find out. Throughout that sale, I visited Ahlers, Linton, and Aurora Lopez Mejia (an artist and jeweler who is a longtime Margiela devotee) to chat with each about how they saw Martin Margiela and what vintage means to them. Here’s what they had to say, and all of it, I might say, is a tribute to a designer who was as creatively monumental as he was intensely private, always shying away from the public eye.
I was studying to be a criminal lawyer in Germany, but I wasn’t sure that was what I wanted to be doing. I needed a plan B. I interned at a commercial fashion showroom that had worked with Martin [Margiela] since the early days of his label, and the woman running it offered me a job. I knew it wouldn’t be with Martin but with her other brands, and I was like, “It’s really Martin I want to work for.” His work caught my attention really early on; my mother introduced me to it, as she was in fashion. The first piece I saw was a little felted wool vest.
Then when I was a student living in Hamburg, I would go to Munich every few months, and a store there had one of Martin’s cabans [peacoat jacket]—the iconic caban with the leather buttons. Over the next year and a half, I’d go look at what the store had, and one day, when the owner told me that he’d noticed me coming in for so many months, I explained that I was studying and couldn’t really afford anything. He said, “So how much could you spend?” I told him, and he said, “You know what? I will give you a discount. I am sure you will be a great Margiela customer in the future.” I still have that caban jacket.
During my first year working as a lawyer, I spent my vacations doing work for Margiela, and then, in 1997, I had the chance to do the label’s sales for the Benelux countries and the UK. A few years later, Margiela’s commercial director called me. There was a guy working on the team whose boyfriend was a dancer, and they were moving to America. I had three weeks to get myself to Paris to start work. Part of my job involved working with Martin on the product, being in the fittings and giving my input.
And then, in 2006, I left. It was a hard decision because it’s such an emotional company. I handed in my notice on the day of the 2005 Christmas party. Martin came up to me and said, “Christina, I heard you are leaving. There are so many exciting things happening. Don’t you love the brand anymore?” And I said, “Martin, I am leaving because I love the brand too much.” At a certain point, things had changed so much, yet Martin and his work still connected with me on many levels: the visual, emotional, and community levels.
My favorite category of Martin’s clothing was always outerwear. I can still look at the pieces and fall in love with them again: the cabans with the cigarette shoulders or this one [I am wearing today] with the kimono sleeves. My favorite collections were the flat collection [spring 1998] and the oversized collection [fall 2000]. My budget exploded with those—I had to pay them off over several months! I also liked his trousers because they were so perfectly cut and the knitwear because a collection’s ideas would be translated into it so clearly, but it would be very wearable. Wearing Margiela, for me, was between armor and uniform: It gave you strength from the inside. The pieces I bought…. It’s not like you recognize it’s Margiela. It’s that they have a presence.
It’s 18 years since I left Margiela, and for the first 10 years, there was no way I would part with any of what I had. But then some items didn’t fit anymore (if I could swap them now for a bigger size so I didn’t have to sell them, I would!); others fit but didn’t have the look I wanted now. Martin’s clothes are at their best when they’re being worn and telling their story. Seeing them hanging in your wardrobe gives you joy, but I had started giving some away to friends who I thought might appreciate them. The idea of parting with what I had was about answering the question of how a garment could continue to tell its story—and how other people could share in the joy I felt.
Then, two years ago, my mother passed away, and my brother and I were clearing out her apartment. He said, “Please deal with the clothes because I have no idea about them,” and I thought that was a sign that I had to be an actor in defining where my own collection would end up. So I started to think: Which of my Margiela pieces am I going to part with, and which am I keeping?
I sent Gill [Linton] an email and asked if she would be interested. When she came to my apartment and saw the collection, you could see its beauty through her eyes. You can still wear Martin’s clothes—his clothing has so many connections; they still feel right in the context of today. And it might sound silly, but every single piece of his that I owned had a soul.
We intentionally try to be oppositional [at Byronesque]—the Financial Times once called us “esoteric avant-guardians of vintage”! We started because you couldn’t really find anything like this [the vintage Martin Margiela]. It was really hard. Fast-forward, and the market is completely saturated. It’s why our motto is “just because it’s old doesn’t mean it is good.” People think just because something is old they can price it high, without any real understanding of what the piece might have meant culturally. Auctions can skew the price of something, and then you end up with people giving arbitrary valuations with very little understanding of why a piece may or may not be important.
A lot of time with vintage, you have to take the prices with a pinch of salt. Just because something has been on Grailed at a certain price doesn’t mean that is what it is worth because things will sit on Grailed for years! We work with brands that create culture beyond the clothes themselves, which is why we have such a strong affinity with Martin Margiela.
When Christina [Ahlers] contacted us, I was in two minds as to whether to do another Margiela sale. We’ve sold a lot of it. We did a huge sale in 2017 with a collection of rare pieces, including a ton of Tabis. I didn’t even really appreciate what the interest would be then, that there was this Margiela fever building, but we had a line out the door like it was Supreme. Then, when I saw what Christina had…I just loved that we didn’t really need to merchandise this. You could look at it and see that it’s someone’s wardrobe: It was very carefully and precisely worked out. Sometimes at Byronesque, we fall into the trap of asking ourselves, “Is it really special? Is it esoteric? Does it belong in a museum?” This was the first time I thought: I would buy this stuff. I don’t want to romanticize it, but this was the uniform of the people who worked at Margiela and believed so much in what they were all doing.
Christina is in the famous Annie Leibovitz photo of the Margiela team. I heard a story—I don’t know if it’s true—that when Annie was about to take the image, [Martin’s] team were calling him, saying, “Annie is ready—are you coming?!” But he didn’t, so it’s an empty chair. And it’s brilliant he didn’t because if he had been seen, it would have burst our bubble a bit. Funnily enough, we got an email from someone asking about the sale, saying, “My husband is in that photo. Can we come by?”
[With Christina’s collection] there were a few things we told her she should keep—either because she is incredibly stylish and they still looked great on her or because she’d regret passing them on to sell. We had a little more than 150 pieces, some still with original tags, some only lightly worn. I can’t speak for Christina’s personal motivations as to why she wanted to part with her collection now, but people tend to recognize when it’s time for it to go. We hear that a lot.
So many of her pieces are wearable and look quite simple until you get up close and see the detail. Even I was surprised—like the overstarched knit cardigans, which were amazing, or the pants with the waistbands that had been broken down, messed up, and put back together. With a lot of Martin’s stuff, you just say to yourself, Wow, God, where did he get that idea from?! To the naked eye, that’s just a pair of pants. But then you look again. It’s like classified ads: You have to read between the lines [laughs] before you go look at an apartment or on a date.
We did the sale by appointment only because there can be a lot of time wasters. You wouldn’t just go into a store and say, “I will give you a quarter of what you are asking for.” I wanted to eliminate that. Somebody registered, came in, and spent an hour taking photos for their Instagram feed. That’s what I was trying to avoid; it’s disrespectful. But if there are students who want to come, we like that; we want them to be able to be inspired and excited.
Something else that people who come in and haggle don’t often realize is that someone has had the initiative to maintain and look after this collection of 150 pieces in pristine condition, and it’s a privilege to be able to buy it 20 or 30 years later. People don’t often take into account the emotional value of something—only the financial.
The story of Martin Margiela is ongoing for me: There’s no other designer I have found who was so right for my life. I first learned of Margiela when I went to school in Los Angeles. There was a rack of his clothes at a boutique on Sunset, and it was hung in a way that made it look weird—almost as if these were abstract accessories that you might wear with clothes. There was no hanger appeal. People had no idea how to wear it or of Martin’s philosophy.
Then this friend of mine, Mara White of Fred Segal, really became passionate about Margiela and what he was doing and started buying the collection, but in a way you could wear it. She understood it could be part of a wearable lifestyle, this…intelligent simplicity. She loved Martin’s tailoring. And I started to go to Paris with her and to the Margiela shows. I was buying Margiela for myself with…an urgency. It just felt like we didn’t have time. Fashion back then [the 1990s] was just what felt good; you could run out the door in this uniform to be in the world, right? That was Margiela for me. It just fit.
I’ve always loved discreet, original pieces. I love finding a treasure I can wear again and again, a no-brainer favorite. His tailoring was impeccable—it would be a perfect jacket, but he made it different: the trompe l’oeil collars or sleeveless with little shoulder pads. His tuxedo jackets are incredible, exquisite.
This sale was the first time I bought vintage Margiela. I discovered Byronesque through my friend Michèle Lamy. I signed up for their mailers and saw this incredible off-white oversized sweater that was part of this Margiela sale and thought, I have to get this piece! It felt like it might have come from the 19th century. That’s what I also love about his pieces: the period references. So I asked to book an appointment—they were almost next door to me in Paris—and I went, though unfortunately, I got distracted, and this guy came in, went to the rack, and grabbed the sweater!
I bought a handful of trousers because I live in them. To this day, I have never found a better pant, ever. I have a pair of his inside-out white pants, but then I found a pair in black at the sale. And these [a pair of black tux pants with the satin side bands extending beyond the trouser legs] I got there, and I can’t take them off.
I bought another trench too. I have one already from the Xerox collection [spring 1996], which had a big collar, that I got at Liberty. I went to that Xerox show. Martin took all of these silhouettes and scanned them onto silk or cotton. There was wine being served in plastic cups, and the runway was made of long card tables. Then you could hear footsteps but couldn’t see anyone; it was just this haunting sound. These almost ghostly figures appeared, wearing the collection, and there were, on the other side of the room, these American cheerleaders, Barbie blondes with the team sweaters, doing the cheers amongst the footsteps and ghosts on the runway. It was such an emotional contrast—very provoking, a statement about society. When I’d go to his shows, I was always hoping to run into Martin. It was always my thing: Will I ever see this man that I am so devoted to?