Deep Talk| Why Maison Margiela's show is "hope" in the post-epidemic era?
We live in an age of information explosion, but sadly the ability to take the good with the bad is diminishing due to the speed at which information travels. Yes, look back at FW24 Men's Fashion Week and you'll see that everything has become extremely "boring" (especially in the post-epidemic era) - many of the old favourites that I've always respected are playing it safe. Fashion journalist André Leon Talley once said, "Beauty is in famine". Maison Margiela, led by John Galliano, has emerged as a "standout" in this desert of beauty, causing a lot of foot stomping and "Bravo's". We can see that the public still has aesthetic ability, only that we are tired of it, neglect it, and even forget it.
Last year, a "Quiet Luxury" swept through the fashion world, with the public talking about how to look classy in the basics. This year, whether in Milan or Paris, the fashion world seems to have switched to realism, with a habit of reflecting on the present and its frankly "mundane problems", creating metaphors for social media and selling clothes that belong only to you. Unfortunately, there is nothing more mundane than the present - simply because we are in it and desperately need to find a shred of self-awareness in the light of the growing economic downturn. To paraphrase fashion writer Carlo Mazzoni in a recent article, "Numbed by emotion, we need a truly artistic and dramatic fashion show that can create 'dreams'".
For many, the word "dream" is still the main characteristic of this industry, which is much more involved in design than in fashion itself. That's why Galliano's haute couture show for Margiela (or "Artisanal" as Margiela defines it), was a real shock for everyone present, even for those who were on Live. Clearly, Galliano is not a designer whose mark can be seen everywhere on the couture street corner. He is "pyrotechnic".
If, as early as 1995, the year Galliano was appointed by Givenchy, Bernard Arnault wanted him to replace the founder Hubert, it seems appropriate to understand that the value of Haute Couture lies entirely in its inescapable humanist and spiritual values. For Margiela, too, its handmade collections began with a tendency to reuse and reassemble things that were no longer used, an avant-garde intuition that later gave rise to "upcycling".
Years ago, a critic described director Atom Egoyan's film Exotica as "a murky aquarium in which the ghosts of human desire swim", and a similar spectacle could be used to describe Margiela's show. The first full moon of the year shone over the Pont Alexandre III in a rainy, smoky, humid atmosphere that spilled over the steps to the quayside along the Seine and dampened the decadent Parisian underworld. A giant light on a boom enhances the ghostly glow of the pavement and the water, as if the effect had been achieved by a camera with a long exposure and a forced flash.
Everything in sight is inspired by Fauvist artist Kees van Dongen's brooding muses of the early 1930s (in his eyes the body is blue, the sky pink and green) and photographs of twilight taken by photographer BrassaĂŻ. Inside and out, a few coffee tables sit in the shadow of a bridge arch, an indoor bar is littered with dirty plates and ceramic shards, the walls are covered in peeling gilded frames and police wanted posters, and guests sit in worn bentwood chairs, pushing violet-flavoured cocktails. In a moment of time travelling, BrassaĂŻ's "dirty Paris" is back.
The funny thing is that at this show one can talk about fashion, but not about the clothes themselves. Look at the thieves in corsets looking forward and backward, the sickly dolls that look like burlesque, the downtrodden walking in the cold in deformed coats, the thin-browed prostitutes in heavy make-up, or the various chilly bystanders looking at the pleasure-seekers that are all of us, all of us are part of this big show. Exaggerated make-up, like disturbing porcelain dolls or wax figures smeared with oil, messy Alphonse Mucha ubiquitous pompadours and ragged patchwork hats express a romantic torment, a quest for the dramatic taste that is inherent in every decadent human being.
The voluptuous nudity within the corsets is exposed as if the vintage, broken garments were being devoured by moths until they reached their most perfect, intangible souls, a disturbing combination of sensuality and sensual expression without warmth, even with a surreal grotesqueness from director Tim Burton. Then, some of the models' faces were erased, and brushstrokes printed on the fabric of painted stockings outlined their breasts. There is no false optimism in this show, but rather a story with dark humour, a Parisian mystery comparable to that of the French writer Eugene Sue, a story that finally breaks away from describing, commenting and reflecting on the obsessions of the moment.
The show also reminded me of the French author Charles Baudelaire and the timeless line from his poem Danse Macabre (later interpreted as an orchestral work, aka "The Dance of the Skulls") "à charme d'un né ant follement attifé (Oh, the charm of the nihilistic beauty of crazy decorations! ant follement attifé (Oh, the vain beauty of madly adorned charms!)". The parade of skeletons and naked bodies in front of us can be linked to the deaths and desires of Parisian history. Fashion, as a field that manifests human creativity, traverses all the shades of the emotional palette, even the most primitive and disturbing ones, and everything has to be sacred and exalted. For too long, we have been accustomed to thinking of fashion as a "luxury", and we have marginalised the voices of "outlier" designers such as AF Vandervorst and John Alexander Skelton. Over the years, the fashion industry has succumbed to the commercial imperative to always speak to the public in positive terms, abandoning a range of human emotions that are both introspective and dark. In retrospect, in the decade dominated by Galliano and McQueen, it was still possible to aestheticise evil without offending the integrity and impeccable morality of the viewer - if you're longing for a nightmare to find joy in, look no further than Andrew Groves' 1999 collection. Check out Andrew Groves' Spring/Summer 1999 collection, or Carol Christian Poell's horrific runway show. Fashion does like to dream, but it forgets that examining the nightmare is an important part of it.
So what is Galliano's nightmare? For example, he is himself a master of finding beauty in the forgotten and the dishonoured. Looking back at his anti-Semitic comments during the Dior period, he is in a way a sharp man, and even more so, he doesn't care to express his true thoughts in public (regardless of whether they are right or wrong). He can face his own nightmares head on and make the design itself present a distinctive beauty, the message conveyed, the atmosphere created and the narrative established are far from the current growth story of the top tier companies. But interestingly, even those who lack the necessary critical tools or background in culture and art were able to be captivated by the show, and were even willing to understand the slightly negative elements.
Galliano hasn't shown haute couture since July 2022, when he created a multi-layered piece around a film about young lovers on the run. Right now, he returned to couture, leading a team that spent months on the details. From a decadent countess in corrugated cardboard robes and a tiara, echoing Galliano's famous 1984 "Les Incroyables" graduation show (a reference to the royal palaces of the French Revolution), to the bodies of puppets on strings or fabrics dripping with flesh and blood, the Belle Ăpoque aristocracy is a new breed of woman, a new generation of women. The corseted waists of Belle Ăpoque aristocrats and the padded silhouettes of Christian Dior's mid-century haute couture are all relevant to Galliano's past work. Galliano used to express the most extravagant things in his work, using 12 months of conception and nine months of production to create light and shadow and water and oil stains on fabrics made from scraps of lace and tulle. Now Galliano has matured, emotionally, visually and psychologically, and is celebrating his first decade at Margiela by going back to his roots.
Some may say that this show is not Margiela at all, but you have to realise that the moment the designer himself left the brand, it was the end of an era. At the end of the day, "Make it your own" - this was Maison Margiela's message and hope for Galliano. And indeed, Galliano has done just that. Here, technology was pushed to a new peak. Inventions and experiments succeeded in blending traditional methods with new technologies, expanding the meaning of couture in an extraordinary way. Silicone treatments made fabrics look as if they had been soaked, mopped up or rained on; tweeds were glued and crinkled, then boiled to shrink the fabric into shape; coats were made from layers of organza and chiffon, light as a feather and printed in heavy wool, then wrapped in tulle (a kind of "millet-feuille" filter of organza and felt) and underneath, the coat was made from a layer of "silk" and a layer of "silk" and a layer of "silk". "millet-feuille" made of organza and felt, under a layer of wool crepe "trompe l'oeil" printed with the texture of classic gentlemen's cloth); "porcelain" soft neckpieces, actually made of polished leather; "série" soft neckpieces; "série" soft neckpieces, actually made of polished leather; and "série" soft neckpieces, actually made of polished leather. leather; "Seamlace" refers to garments made entirely of inlaid lace pieces, while "emotional tailoring" is "a new form of tailoring that gives to clothing the unconscious gestures that shape our expressions".
If you've listened to Galliano's "The Memory OfâŠâŠ" podcast from his early days at Margiela, you'll know how much he loves experimenting with fabrics and techniques and giving them outlandish, edgy names to set them apart from the rest of the house. to set them apart from other brands. This time around, the designer and his team have spent the better part of a year in the lab coming up with new fabrics and methods, and his press release lists more than 15 new ways of working (eight of which are firsts) - his personal favourite is a method he calls "Stripe-tease". tease", in which a striped fabric is worked into a block colour and applied to a shimmering fishtail dress that glows in the light.
In a way, the show was a tangible demonstration of the incalculable power of sustainability, and an attempt to show the public the futility of our sentimental attachment to the glamour of Archive. Is there a tomorrow for fashion? With a little less self-hatred and a little less obsession with the past, even today there are still darker areas of the human imagination to be explored.
Galliano has done it so far, so who will be next?
We'll see.

















