By the end of the 1980s, fashion had already mastered the art of being noticed, embracing visibility, performance, and excess. None of which seemed to interest a young Belgian designer arriving in Paris in 1984. After Martin Margiela assisted the industry’s enfant terrible, Jean Paul Gaultier, for nearly three years, he went on to introduce Paris Fashion Week to anonymity, deconstruction, white paint, and what would later become fashion’s most discussed split-toe silhouette, less than a decade after leaving Antwerp’s Royal Academy of Fine Arts. What followed was the rise of a four-stitch label that somehow turned anti-fashion into one of luxury fashion’s most recognizable languages (plus a six-year stint at Hermès, where anti-fashion temporarily learned how to behave).
It is not the man (who remains largely absent from public view) but the work that continues to circulate. That work now takes the form of more than 200 lots, offered through a sale under the hammer of French auction house Maurice Auction, alongside British house Kerry Taylor Auctions. On July 9, a 1988 telephone covered in white paint, still functioning with a phone number that time forgot, joined by tabi boots marked in the same white, smeared with black graffiti, as well as prototypes, portfolios, sketches, clothes (some even coming straight from the artist’s mother’s wardrobe), will all go under that hammer. But don’t you worry. Before they are dispersed into new lives, or new walk-in closets, they will first sit on view in a free exhibition in fashion’s favorite capital, from July 4 to 8.
“After many years spent moving my archives from place to place, and lending certain pieces for exhibitions, I felt it was time to part with some of my fashion memorabilia. The collection spans a period from 1984 to 2008 and consists of photographs, drawings, and objects. Some pieces were created later, during the pandemic. After long reflection, it was ultimately the idea of bringing joy to several collectors and institutions that led me to send them out into the world,” Margiela said in a statement. Not a bad time to open the back catalogue, with Maison Margiela Folders already setting the stage.
