Maison Margiela have released a masterful film presentation of their Spring 2021 Co-ed collection. Creative director John Galliano worked with mastermind image-maker Nick Knight to create the many-layered film, which is part making-of documentary and part undefinably artistic fashion presentation.

The film begins with a straightforward documentary style, depicting a video call between Galliano and Knight in which the former explains the genesis and production of the collection. Galliano’s excitement and pride are apparent as he discusses the initial process of redeveloping house codes and hunting for inspiration in secondhand shops. But his main point of inspiration for the collection, and the one from which Knight’s visual storytelling beautifully stems, was his experience of Buenos Aires’ underground tango scene.

Amazed by this encounter, Galliano imagined the story which forms the other half of the film. An old man recounts his experience with tango growing up in a recently industrialized Argentine village: the expectations of his arranged marriage are disrupted when his fiancée’s cousins – a sinisterly alluring pair of twins – arrive in the town and initiate a tango frenzy. The film’s narrative does at times lean into the fashion industry’s unfortunately popular trope of fetishizing and glamorizing poverty. The platitudinous line “people in our village were poor, but we could dance,” feels especially emblematic of this, and rather unsavory in a work that exists to sell expensive products to the world’s more affluent.

Nevertheless, this narrative is included to give an emotional content to Galliano’s designs and Nick Knight’s exquisite visuals, and this it does perfectly. The setting is a black stage covered in a shallow pool of water, where a single stark spotlight shines as if cast by the moon. The remarkable sense of depth created by this space feels perfect for the emotive choreography of the dancers who occupy it. An incredible combination of tango and contemporary dance, it feels deeply romantic and tragic. With their roots in tango dressing and their color scheme of black, white, and red, Galliano’s designs feel like excellent theatrical costuming for this performance. Knight augments the artistic elevation of it all with cinematic vignettes and expressionistic camera effects like color inversion.

These narrative and dance scenes are woven between footage and detailed description of the production process behind the collection. It is fascinating to see both people and machines at work in crafting these gorgeous pieces, especially when we hear Galliano discuss how his team conceives of the ready-to-wear collection as an industrialized extension of couture. Knight is wise enough to recognize that pulling back the curtain in fashion is more than capturing a designer rendering sketches and going through swatches of fabric. His narrative is multifaceted as we withness the 360º of the make; cuttings, tailoring, fabrication creation, silk screening, draping, hand stitching, fittings, hair and makeup meetings, choreography, styling, and more. Overlayed onscreen in kinetic motion are the names of the talents involved from Olivier Rizzo to Pat McGrath to Margiela seamstresses and shopkeeps. The enterprise of fashion creation is showcased in it’s entirety and while the viewer is drawing into the narrative surround the elderly tango artist, another set of artistry is on full display educating the viewers about the house and its processes.

Covering everything from the make of footwear to deconstructed tailoring, we also get to witness the development of Maison Margiela’s Recicla pieces, which are composed from combinations of upcycled vintage garments, is also very exciting.

But the unsung heroes of the film are its editing and sound design teams. The documentary and choreography sections could feel like completely different films, yet the editors manage to weave them together into a single creative journey. Brilliant cinematography captures the energy and precision of the construction process.

The sound design and music does incredible work in this process: the mechanical sounds of production are rhapsodically transformed into music, while the tango sections are given, of course, a beautiful and dramatic tango soundtrack. The moment these two pieces of music come together feels like a revelation.

The film is boldly ambitious in its dualistic approach to presenting the collection, and lesser creative teams may have buckled under its weight. Yet through the brilliant work of an excellent creative team, it comes together as a literal and figurative showcase of a designer’s narrative and vision. It may be the best documentary of a collection creation ever.

The Journey Of A Collection From Dream To Reality Was On Full Display In A Documentary Wrapped In The Form Of A Fantasy.

DID MAISON MARGIELA & NICK KNIGHT JUST CREATE FASHION’S GREATEST DOCUMENTARY?

When John Galliano teased the word magical in a conversation ahead of the reveal of his film today, he wasn’t overpromising. Epic, explanatory, intimate, and dripping with suspense, it cuts between design sessions and rehearsals in the Maison Margiela studio and the acting out of a gothic South American wedding tragedy, danced out to the strains of the tango.

Demonstrating the nitty-gritty of making clothes while showing what they actually are and at the same time conjuring imagined scenes from a designer’s mind is a huge achievement. All the terms that John Galliano has been speaking about passionately for years—“creative process,” “teams,” “themes,” “inspirations,” “techniques”—are suddenly made visible and explicable, brought to life in this fashion-docu-fantasia of a film by Nick Knight. No wonder Galliano had said: “This is the best medium” and “I’m very happy to work this way.”

The glee and the seriousness he puts into his work are palpable throughout—as is the effect of the eye-opening participation of the Maison Margiela models on his creative process. Galliano vividly describes the memory of seeing the tango being danced in a dilapidated Buenos Aires warehouse. Then he hires a tango teacher, and the performances of the models, the way they move, actively start to shape the clothes. One thing leads to another, and soon it’s turned into a full-ensemble wedding scenario, with bride and groom and guests dancing toward a doomed, underwater destiny. The fevered action runs with a mysterious spoken script, written by Kier-La Janisse.

But we also see Galliano methodically dissecting the gauze wedding dresses, the 1940s suits, the tailored coats and bias-cut silk skirts. We see how each section fits into the numbered Maison Margiela lines. Understand, in detail, how the Recicla upcycled pieces are made into composite garments, and how each of these one-offs are “stringently tested,” ensuring that the materials meet safety standards for sale. Watch the expert skill Galliano applies to cutting away jacket shoulders and inserting tango-shirt frills into slits in classic coats.

He is at pains to elucidate how this Co-Ed ready-to-wear collection is a direct follow-on from the research for the Artisanal clothes he develops for the Maison Margiela equivalent of haute couture. Interspersed is footage of the manufacturing processes: the screen-printing of the wet-look patches on suits; how traditionally loomed Venetian brocades are made into the dancers’ mary jane shoes; the combination of laser-cut leather and hand-finishing behind the making of bags.

None of this could ever have been laid out in a runway show. It makes for a multilayered piece, capturing the drama and the depth of the collaborative work at Maison Margiela, for millions of online viewings and endless commentary and analysis. And the best thing? It’s not an event which is over and done with in the standard 20 minutes it takes for models to file out from behind a white screen, and back again. “Yes,” Galliano laconically mused, “ You can put your feet up, have a cup of tea, and watch it anytime.”

“Yes,” Galliano laconically mused, “ You can put your feet up, have a cup of tea, and watch it anytime.”

MAISON MARGIELA SPRING 2021 READY-TO-WEAR

We see Galliano methodically dissecting the gauze wedding dresses, the 1940s suits, the tailored coats and bias-cut silk skirts. We see how each section fits into the numbered Maison Margiela lines. Understand, in detail, how the Recicla upcycled pieces are made into composite garments, and how each of these one-offs are “stringently tested,” ensuring that the materials meet safety standards for sale. Watch the expert skill Galliano applies to cutting away jacket shoulders and inserting tango-shirt frills into slits in classic coats.

None of this could ever have been laid out in a runway show.

Repairing means returning to precious things, re-discovering forgotten character and value, and awakening the collective consciousness and emotions hidden in the heart. Maison Margiela named the 2020 autumn and winter series Défilé, an experiment in rewriting the social meaning of clothing. Creative director John Galliano adopted the clothing culture that represented the middle class of the last century, reclaiming, remaking, upgrading and transforming the traditionally old fashion. They are reborn in modern times.

The entire autumn and winter series let people immerse themselves in the unique color aesthetics of John Galliano, from the elegant orange, brown, mustard yellow, lavender, light blue, to the strong red, forest green, cornflower blue, absinthe green, positive Yellow and Bordeaux red-brown. The entire series continues the style inspiration of the American artist Edward Hopper, who was borrowed from the Spring/Summer High Order series. From soft chiffon to stiff cloth, it has a distinctive texture like paint on a painting.

This season also uses the materials of old clothes to compose the lifestyle of the middle class. People’s preferences for adventure and sports can be seen from hiking and sailor uniforms; they include wool, flannel, and knitted tarpaulins for traditional men’s sportswear, as well as terry cloth, soft and thin fabrics used by middle-class women’s clothing. Silk and velvet are embellished with imitation fur and imitation crocodile leather materials to symbolize their yearning for luxury; while off-the-shoulder jackets and scarves echo traditional women's styles such as ribbon bow shirts, culottes, and Mary-Jane bring a sense of ease and familiarity to the whole.

The ubiquitous restoration and restructuring also appear in the "semi-finished" manual details. For example, the thin printed woolen cloth, the handwork with fan-shaped trims like lace, the asymmetrical tailored dress with transparent clothing, etc., with a bit of rough deconstruction, all focus on the identity roles of contemporary people again, and discover the tradition The beautiful value of things, and rebates the social thoughts at the moment resonates.

This time, John Galliano also brings a new special "Recicla" series for us to "reuse" concept throughout the vintage single product to give new thought, the transformation of restructuring, and set the new white Recicla label, the column name clothing sources Details such as the age and time will also enhance people's awareness of clothing and the environment.

The "Recicla" series of clothing, which will be sold in limited mode in the future, will appear as a diversified single product in this autumn and winter series, including a "worn-out" one-piece dress made of several pieces of clothing, an elongated collar formed by cutting the coat, Rattan woven handbags, Snatched handbags made of taro leaves, and 5AC handbags made from recycled precious leather.

"Recicla! Retch-ee-cla!" John Galliano, who is often accused of living too much in his own world, shouted in the backstage interview: "Great! This is great! We can sell these in other series The costumes make me very excited!"

As the times change, he has also begun to redefine the meaning of "luxury" and reassess the problem of clothing production and excess. The whole series is also as John Galliano summarized. All efforts will become social innovation in the future. This problem is not only an urgent issue, but also a problem that people should stop and think about. He said: "Everything we believe in will be rewarded."

Maison Margiela 2020 Fall/Winter Collection

Maison Margiela 2020 Fall/Winter Collection looks back on the value of old things and rewrites the appearance of modern clothes.

MAISON MARGIELA 2020 FALL/WINTER COLLECTION

“You are about to enter my head, at your own risk! Mon dieu. Be careful, it can be a very dangerous place!” John Galliano laughs, little bit joking and a little not, as he talks to us about his great “leap” on Zoom, and how he became a director. Provided that the work he did for Maison Margiela can be defined as a 'film' - and only this - and which is at the same time a documentary, a story, an interactive provocation, something sincere, pure, extravagant. 

Residents of the Paris neighborhood where Maison Margiela is based were recently surprised when they saw a drone hovering over St Joseph's church, then slip into an open window in the building opposite and disappear. The drone filmed from above Galliano and his team at work in the atelier, and is just one of the many images of the short film made for the new Artisanal collection that comes out today.

Whatever the damage that the fashion industry has suffered due to the pandemic, the boom of innovative ideas of this period, ideas that serve to talk about clothes, thoughts, exchanges of opinion, and humanity in a broad sense, is bringing quickly to a real revolution. “Very soon I realized that fashion, as we have presented and done it so far, would never be the same again,” says Galliano. “ It won't be until a vaccine is found. And only when I accepted this new reality within myself, was I able to welcome the idea that something new could happen, that we could really change things, have new ideas, be resourceful, and this rekindled my enthusiasm. Nothing can ever hinder the course of creativity, I will not allow this to happen!”

From an emotional point of view, Galliano has, in practice, overturned his mindset , the one that for years made him create "behind closed doors" and defined his personal safety zone and the codes of anonymity of Maison Margiela. Now, however, he has decided that he will show the world every single phase of the creation of the collection, in the smallest detail, with only some very special twists within his storytelling. “I thought, 'I'll be completely transparent.' I've always been afraid of appearing in front of the lens, and all those things you do when you know it's aimed at you, but I decided I was ready. And so I called Nick Knight , to whom I am very attached, and in whom I have great confidence."

The result? Two months of shooting documenting every move by Galliano and his team in every possible format. “I wanted to document the whole process in an almost voyeuristic way. Nick caught me from afar. There were drones flying around us, in and out of my conversations. And I was wearing two GoPro cameras, one on my head, one on my chest. " Knight also put together the calls on Zoom, the messages on the phone, the calls on FaceTime, he used the thermal camera and even an X-ray app, whatever tool could capture the details of my work, up close and from afar.”

“It was a completely new and very fun journey,” Galliano exclaims. And partly the technology has somehow returned to the collection. “It influenced the way I chose fabrics for some of the clothes, it was a really creative way of working. But, of course, a lot of the scenes are in real-time, with real clothes, because I think today you want to see real things too. I asked the kids to bounce back on their iPads at the start of the pandemic. They showed their experiments by cutting fabrics in 3D on the kitchen table, on the balcony, in the garage. In reality, it all started like this.”

This is the John Galliano narrator. But there must have been something else too. “I wanted to insert a double story”, he reflects. “There is the story of the collection, but inserted within a thriller. Because? Because I like the genre, I like horror movies and thrillers, and how they are built. And because for me, the thriller is the thrill of creation, research, discovery.”

The second part of the short film was instead shot in the Cotswolds, England, and follows the timeline (beginning-end) of the creative process, which goes from the creation of the garment to the shooting. An intense experience that, due to the safety regulations and the lockdown, brought the team together very much. “We had to be in a group on set, live together, eat together, all sleep in the same place. And then, suddenly, I can't explain it, the magic exploded. My muses have become interpreters of a force, I don't know where it came from. They were there, they lived this thing, all together: my clan, my tribe, all six of them. I wanted a connection to be made between them. When you see them in motion and they communicate 100% what they are wearing, there were times when I had to leave the set, for what I saw and felt, it was so exciting that I had to walk away ”.

And all those preconceived ideas about the digital representation of fashion, which leaves no room for emotion? Galliano today considers them obsolete. “Filming is stimulating, intellectually and emotionally. Many continue to say, 'How can an emotion be transmitted digitally?' Well, I think the emotion was palpable”. What came out, he says, is a sort of “prototype” for the future, which can be used “to activate different types of dialogue, and to make generations Y and Z understand in detail how we do things. How we created the fabrics ourselves, also from the interlinings, the way we overlap the fabrics, and how we created our embroideries, in short, how we industrialized ourselves, how we became enterprising."

Maison Margiela Artisanal Co-Ed Fall 2020 Couture Collection Fashion Show

Provided that the work he did for Maison Margiela can be defined as a 'film' - and only this - and which is at the same time a documentary, a story, an interactive provocation, something sincere, pure, extravagant. 

MAISON MARGIELA ARTISANAL CO-ED FALL 2020 COUTURE COLLECTION 🇫🇷

Established "Maison Martin Margiela" in Paris in 1988. Renamed to Maison Margiela in January 2015. Maison Margiela is a French-based fashion brand. Widely available for women's and men's wear, accessories, shoes, fragrances, etc.

Martin Margiela, whose conceptual methods such as clothing restructuring and redefinition and show style influenced many people, and the Maison, which had the greatest influence on the history of fashion.

The collection is grouped according to the concept and numbered, and is circled such as "0", "1", and "4". Among them, line 6 "Clothes for women" became "MM6 Maison Martin Margiela" in an independent form.

When he made his debut in the ready-to-wear collection in Paris in the spring and summer of 1989, he proposed a jacket and bottom with a thin silhouette for the loose silhouette that was popular until then, and the opportunity for a tight and body-fitting silhouette to flourish. It is said that it was made. For this reason, Margiela's style was called "deconstruction" and "Destroy Collection" because it overturned all common sense.

They made clothes from a unique perspective, such as utilizing used clothing (using used clothing for the fabric) and processing new clothing in the style of used clothing. Margiela's style cannot be bound by grunge, but it is described as a shabby look and a pioneering style of grunge fashion that was popular in the '90s.

The label of the clothes is left blank or only the number circled is written, and the person's name and brand name are not written.

0 "Artisanal" - collection for men and women

The garments of the Artisanal collection are the most representative of the deconstructivist period of Martin Margiela - inaugurated around 1988 - remained in production until about 2006.

In this collection, Maison Martin Margiela expresses its love for avant-garde design and conceptualism. The first collection publicly defined as Line 1 had entirely white labels with the reference numbers embossed in relief - continuous until 2008.

Line 3 is produced for the first time in 2010 in association with L'Oreal's Luxury Products Division.

Line of feminine basic garments focused on female taste more than on a design approach - presented in the SS04 collection. 

Presented for the first time during the Maison Margiela SS08 collection.

It is the male equivalent of Line 1 - always presented in 1988.

Also: Maison Margiela has recently launched the famous REPLICA line with Oversized T-Shirt, find it here.

A mixed line for both men and women, unisex accessories: handbags, belts, small leather goods and a selection of jewelry - first introduced in January 2005.

Made in 2008 in collaboration with the Damiani Group

The male equivalent of Line 4, is a series of basic garments presented on SS04.

Line 22 concretizes itself as a seasonal selection of footwear taken respectively from Line 1 and Line 10. The first release of this continuous line is in 1998 for female footwear and in 2008 for male footwear.

The 6 line is best-known as MM6 and is a broad-spectrum female collection designed for a wider audience. A rebrand of the MM6 line occurred recently in 2006.

Founder Martin Margiela was born in 1959 in Limbourg, Belgium. He studied drawing at the age of 16 and entered the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp at the age of 18. Major in fashion. There were six Antwerp people in the academy sync. In 1984, he became an assistant after being impressed by Jean Paul Gaultier's show, which he saw for the first time in Paris. Trained under Gaultier from 1984 to 1987.

In 1988, he established his own label "Maison Martin Margiela" in Paris, France. Debuted in the ready-to-wear collection in Paris in the spring and summer of 1989.

Martin Margiela designed Hermès women's ready-to-wear from fall/winter 1998-1999 to spring/summer 2004.

He collaborated with Comme des Garcons in the spring/summer of 1998, and participated in many exhibition activities such as holding the "Radical Fashion" exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London in 2001.

In 2002, he received support for investment, manufacturing, store development, etc. of a group company of Diesel Renzo Rosso. From here, the number of stores has increased globally, and the Maison has grown about five times in the six years since 2002.

In 2008, the archive exhibition of the 20th anniversary of Maison Martin Margiela (Spring-Summer 1989-Spring-Summer 2009) was held at the Tokyo store. In addition, he announced a jewelry collection in collaboration with Damiani.

In 2009, Renzo Rosso commented to national media that "Martin Margiela was not involved in the design of the Maison and the design team has taken over the Maison."

In 2010, the first fragrance "Untitled" was released. In 2012, a candle with the same scent as the fragrance appeared.

Announced collaboration with H&M in the fall/winter 2012-2013 season. In 2013, Margiela's first men's fragrance Replica appeared.

In 2014, John Galliano became a creative director. In January 2015, the brand name was changed to "Maison Margiela".

In 2016, announced the new icon bag "5AC".

Martin Margiela, whose conceptual methods such as clothing restructuring and redefinition and show style influenced many people, and the Maison, which had the greatest influence on the history of fashion

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