Margiela’s New Chapter

Glenn Martens’s debut Artisanal collection for Maison Margiela was a creative tour de force – a reverent nod to the house’s founder and a bold breath of fresh air after a jam-packed summer of shows. It marked a beautiful beginning for the brand under Martens’s creative direction. Here’s everything you need to know from his first outing.

A nod to the Maison’s Founder
The show took place at Le Centquatre in the north of Paris – a venue that holds special significance for fashion insiders, as it was the site of Martin Margiela’s farewell collection in 2008. Beginning this new chapter in that very space felt deeply symbolic. Martens also paid homage to the house’s first Spring/Summer 1989 collection, where every model walked the runway masked. In a clever twist, each look in this Artisanal debut featured an intricately crafted mask – airy in tulle, heavily embroidered, or sculpted from compressed cardboard and upcycled leather biker jackets – a poetic reference to the brand’s legacy of anonymity and a masterstroke in storytelling.

A Voyage Back in Time
Martens’s debut took the audience on a journey through history, drawing inspiration from the medieval architecture and atmosphere of Flanders and the Netherlands – a nod to the shared Belgian roots of both Margiela and Martens, who hails from the fairytale town of Bruges.

“The verticality and volumes of silhouettes reflect the Gothic structures of towers. Statuesque forms evoke the saintly figures of church façades. Corsetry, draping and optical illusions accentuate the anatomy and sculpturalise the physique. The interiors of Northern European Renaissance houses are abstracted in motifs and techniques,” the show notes explained.

Artistic references were woven throughout with precision: hand-painted, embossed floral wallpapers from 16th-century Flanders were recreated on copy paper overlays, fabric prints, and embossments. Still-life collages inspired by 17th-century Dutch paintings—flowers, game, and fruit—were printed on plastic or fabric, then cut into three-dimensional shapes. Elsewhere, garments painted by hand mimicked the expressive brushstrokes of Symbolist painter Gustave Moreau, transforming the body into a living canvas.

The Art of Beauty
This Artisanal collection was also a meditation on transformation – of garments, traditions, and beauty itself. True to the house’s ethos, Martens sourced most of his materials from upcycled fabrics, many discovered at Guérissol, a popular chain of Parisian thrift shops. Backstage, he spoke of the process with something close to reverence: a quiet kind of magic that turns the ordinary into the extraordinary.

The gesture speaks directly to the spirit of Martin Margiela, whose radical vision gave discarded objects a second life through conceptual brilliance. And for Martens, the connection is not only philosophical, but also deeply personal. “I myself am one of those children of the Margiela generation,” he told Vogue Business. “Martin is more than a designer – he is a school that has changed a lot of people’s thinking. He was trying to find a different way of looking at beauty, at construction, and at fashion at large. That ethos has shaped so many designers – some consciously, others more intuitively. I’ve always followed that path.”

There’s also something distinctly Belgian about Martens’s approach – a quiet, anti-establishment search for beauty in the overlooked. “Belgium isn’t exactly the most beautiful country in the world – it’s rainy, industrial, and quite grey,” he mused in the same interview. “So we’re almost forced to find beauty in the unexpected. Whether it’s Dries Van Noten combining the most unlikely colours and making them sing, or Martin turning a plastic bag into luxury – that’s a Belgian attitude. And it’s something I want to bring back to the house.”

The show closed on a characteristically Martens note – celebratory, offbeat, and full of heart. Models emerged from backstage, cheered on by members of the atelier dressed in the Maison’s signature white coats, forming a guard of honour that felt both intimate and jubilant. Then, guests wandered into a sea of multicoloured balloons – a surreal and joyful finale that left no doubt: this is more than a new chapter for the house. It’s the beginning of a deeply thoughtful and fiercely imaginative new era.

Courtesy: Maison Margiela

Text: Lidia Ageeva