What was there to take from Glenn Martens sharing his ready-to-wear Maison Margiela debut with an orchestra of 61 children? It was a total surprise and delight to be there watching and hearing the musicians, ages 7 to 15, from Romilly-sur-Seine, abandoning themselves to perform their set of Mozart, Bizet, Strauss, Beethoven, and Prokofiev, wearing adult-size tuxedos. From where I was sitting, my favorites were the two girls dueting on the baby grand, and the tiny pair who exuberantly bashed the giant kettle drum, always on cue. One was so small their feet didn’t touch the ground from their chair, but they ended up making the biggest noise in the house.
Genuine smiles broke out in the audience—exactly the opposite of which were on the models, whose mouths were held open by metal rectangles with tags in each corner, “like obliged smiles,” said Martens in a preview. “Martin [Margiela] would always call it the ‘anonymity of the person,’ and there have been millions of ways where this has been developed in the history of the house, with paint, with masks. We decided this season to strip away the mask, actually have this kind of four-stitched mouthpiece. The forced smiles can also be about the whole situation in the world. But people will make up their own mind about it.”
Martens didn’t elaborate on the significance of the children’s orchestra—it was meant to be a surprise. Maybe there was an updated reference to the 1989 show that Martin Margiela famously staged on a rundown suburban playground with kids running around. Or perhaps there was something in the idea of Martens feeling a bit like a kid stepping onto the adult fashion stage, about to perform the classics that everyone in the audience knows.
This is what he began to do in the show, in a much more calm and down-to-earth way than his explosive, haunting vision of medieval monks, peeling 16th-century walls, and ghostly apparitions. Instead, here was a clear following of the original Martin Margiela concept of streetwear, excellent tailoring, reappropriated vintage clothing, and cool subversions of the language of formal eveningwear.
John Galliano took Margiela into the realms of cinematic performance and character building through his extraordinary arsenal of couture skills. Martens is much more grounded in the original Belgian aesthetic. He’s from Bruges, not Antwerp like Martin Margiela, and comes from a long understanding of working for labels (Y-Project and Diesel) that deal in clothes that connect with young people and in what is commercial.
He understands the importance of the austere and the stark: minimalist-gothic long black leather coats and dresses, the dirty denim coats and the trailing tape-ties that are one of the earliest MM features. “My ambition has reconnected to the reality of the street a bit, and that was something that we discussed here in the beginning,” Martens said.
But early in the show, Martens also introduced the kind of slightly deconstructed tailoring style that the post-Armani generation adopted as its own very slightly subversive go-to-work uniform. The key was that it was always very well made, with a great fit, even if it might have a raw-cut lapel or some other pleasing, slightly off-normal detail. Martens’s tweaks created elongated V shapes and lapels tucked inside—also with the trenches.
He also evolved the original Margiela idea of plastic garment bags into a much subtler and more beautiful series of silk-veiled tailoring—a man’s shirt with a tuxedo waistcoat seen underneath, a white veiled woman’s evening jacket as a dress with a lace blouse trapped beneath. Is the arch Pied Piper of Gen Z actually aiming for more grown-up dressers too? “I think we could really have everybody, to be honest,” said Martens. “I mean, even though I’m always going to be a loud person, there was always a really wonderful wardrobe at Margiela. And I would like to think these things could be timeless.”
Martens also tasked himself to do “day to evening.” There, too, classic Margiela-isms came fully into play with a series of draped-satin floral-print wrap dresses and vintage-looking lingerie slip dresses, sexily taped into shape. Silk scarves, meanwhile, were fused onto the front of formal evening coats and jackets, instantly achieving that nonchalantly rakish look without even trying.
Martens knows he’s stepped into ridiculously big shoes at one of those houses with a heritage that is sacred to some. “So many people think they own it,” he said with a shrug—and then there are millions more on TikTok who follow him and have strong opinions. The cruel appearance of his mouthpieces is certain to detonate its own flurry of scandal, but let’s wait and see what happens if the brand does start delivering this strong range to stores. Who knows? Martens might just end up pleasing everyone, just like the children who took their bows to uproarious applause after their inaugural performance in Paris.
