Maison Margiela Finds Tenderness and Irony with Glenn Martens

"There was an immediate echo of that in Glenn Martens ' debut ready-to-wear show - not in the clothes, but the staging itself. An orchestra peopled with 61 young musicians, aged seven to 15, a few within their first months of music school, took to their instruments to play with various endearingly imperfect degrees of cack-handedness, grand pieces by Strauss, Tchaikovsky, Mozart and more."

""They're ," one seatmate commented to me, laughing uproariously. Which was of course the whole fabulous, rousing, endorphin inducing point. Indeed, the entire audience broke out into wide grins before the first model hit the catwalk - a rare occurrence in fashion, and an auspicious beginning to any designer's tenure. Ironically, the wrong notes hit just the right note, of tenderness and irony."

"Every debut this season - and there are very many - is in part a litmus test on an incoming talent's ability to crib on their respective house's patrimony and reflect it in new fashion. That means both actual garments, and the entire ambience around the house. Martens' show seemed to reference Margiela's Spring/Summer 1990 show, staged in a derelict playground in the 20th arrondissement of Paris where the children of the neighbourhood walked amongst the models."

Imperfection acted as a central aesthetic: unravelling hems, careworn fabrics and rediscovered, disused objects preserved time's grime. Glenn Martens staged a debut that foregrounded imperfect performance, with an orchestra of 61 young musicians playing Strauss, Tchaikovsky, Mozart and more with endearingly cack‑handed execution. Audience reaction was immediate and joyous, with wrong notes producing tenderness, irony and broad smiles before the first model appeared. The staging explicitly referenced Margiela's past shows, including the Spring/Summer 1990 playground presentation and the Autumn/Winter 1997 brass‑band procession, translating house patrimony into atmosphere as well as garments. The result combined homage, theatricality and warmth.

Read at AnOther