Glenn Martens Has Made His Debut at Maison Margiela—Revisit Vogue Editors’ First Impressions Here
Is this the summer of the fashion debut? Yes! Absolutely. In the last two weeks we’ve seen Jonathan Anderson introduce his vision for Dior with a menswear collection, while Michael Rider presented his co-ed vision at Celine—a return home for the designer who worked at the French label under Phoebe Philo way back in the day. Now we get to see a debut couture collection from Glenn Martens, as he dons his white lab coat, and steps into the creative director position at Maison Margiela. Vogue editors will be live-blogging the show—some of us live from the Centquatre-Paris, and others from One World Trade Center while watching the livestream. Hey, at least there’s air conditioning! Join us for what is sure to be one of the year’s most memorable shows.
Dip-Dyed Nails
A handful (get it?) of models walked with dip-dyed nails à la Michèle Lamy. Michèle uses husband Rich Owens s hair dye to tint her tips black—Glenn Martens styled the models in hot pink. I wonder what the provenance is?
A great deal of this Glenn Martens for Maison Margiela debut Artisanal collection is… thrifted! Martens and his teams built a lot of the pieces from second-hand knits and other pieces sourced from Guérissol, a chain of six stores around Paris at which pieces generally cost just 5 euros. So Martens wasn’t kidding when he said: “the preciousness of showing you are extremely rich just doesn’t fit into the Margiela language. So we’re not going to do a $75,000 dress, all hand-embroidered or whatever, because that wouldn’t fit in here. But we are going to find a different form of opulence and richness, and hopefully somebody a little bit more cheeky will engage with it.”
SHHH Luke I love Guérissol… I didn t include it in the Paris Vintage Guide because I try to gate-keep a few things.
I think we just saw pretty powerful evidence that Glenn Martens and Maison Margiela are a match with serious potential. And this, I think, is one reason why: today we see a lot of houses that cosplay being avant garde in order to generate heat, but at heart, of course, they are commercial animals. Maison Margiela is one of the very few houses that has avant garde-ism (if that s a thing) running through every strand of its DNA. The job for those running the company is to translate that resource into commercial energy in order to keep the house ticking over... but Martens doesn t have to do commercial stuff "with a twist" - because the whole of the house is deliciously twisted in its dedication to difference. And he s built that way too.
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