Margiela/Galliera x Palais Galliera

Classifying Martin Margiela’s enigmatic persona isn’t just a mere matter of curiosity for the fashion-proud, but a personal mission. Between 1989 and 2009, the Belgian designer bravely couture like a conspiracy theorist, debunking the hallowed mythologies of the luxury market with techniques that thwarted the rules of finery and originality. His challenging aesthetic refused to pander to the ancient hierarchies of the visual world, presenting so-called ‘high design’ for the paradox it is; an illusion fed by elitism and exclusivity. An extensive exhibition at the Palais Galliera seeks to substantiate the scattered knowledge that currently feeds our habit, devoting a retrospective to the rich twenty years the designer was stationed at the house, before making his characteristically covert departure.

Comprised of over 100 silhouettes from past collections, films, archive artefacts and special installations, the survey documents the life and work of the designer with unprecedented proximity, treating these idiosyncratic innovations with due intellectual analysis. From the inspired treatment of the Japanese Tabi toe, to the wry wit of trompe l’oeil dresses and coats. Extreme oversizing showed an insolent regard for custom, blowing up silhouettes by 200 percent, while the Barbie Collection fashioned doll-sized clothes fit for human consumption with that same pointed humor. Though it was two definitive collections, the Artisanal and the Replica, which showed the boundary-breaking mettle of the house at its most adroit, eroding the aura of originality to near redundancy with recovered and re-fashioned vintage garments and identical reproductions. All these shunned the traditional staging of the sterile catwalk in favor of more spirited surrounds, invading already existing locales with a function for daily life, like waste grounds, metro stations and dank concrete car parks. Under the eye of any other, these might teeter dangerously close to novelty, but Margiela’s measured executions never let that factor. This was not a sensationalist with a cache of cheap tricks, but an erudite artist who held a mirror to our minds, exposing the thoughts that fuel the barbed psychology of fashion, a form so quickly accused of vacuity; if anyone tries to play that card after March 3rd, they obviously haven’t paid a visit to Margiela/Galliera, 1989-2009.