©Vogue Runway The newly appointed creative director is tested on their understanding of the house’s archives and their methods of expressing respect for the house’s heritage. The balance between boldly revealing a personal vision and incorporating the archives into their designs will determine expectations for the next few seasons. Amidst the recent wave of high-profile creative director appointments and departures across major fashion houses, Maison Margiela’s Glenn Martens stood out as a notable example in this regard. He lived up to his reputation as a designer who carried on Margiela’s deconstructionist legacy from his days at Diesel and Y/Project, earning praise for what may have been one of the best shows of the year. Such praise was possible because people discovered genuine respect and affection for Margiela in his collection, alongside his self-deprecating humor¹. To name a few examples: he held his debut show at the same venue where Margiela held his final retrospective in 2009, as if to announce Margiela’s revival. He also featured the masks that first appeared in Margiela’s debut show, S/S 89, which have become a symbol of anonymity, respect for clothing, and resistance to contemporary high fashion. Additionally, he incorporated the trompe-l’oeil² technique associated with Margiela, along with still lifes and Gothic architectural elements representing the aesthetics of the Flanders region, where both Martens and Margiela were born. In doing so, he reinterpreted the origins and symbols of the house in a high-fashion manner. As rumored, everyone at the show seemed to agree: “This is Margiela,”³ Glenn Martens may have presented a fashion show that was even more Margielaian than Margiela himself. ©Maison Margiela However, I couldn’t shake the doubt I have had since John Galliano’s time at Margiela—whether referencing and reinterpreting Maison Margiela’s archives in a “fashionable” way is really in line with the house’s psyche? Looking back at the references in this show, for example, the S/S 90 show using PVC materials was held at an outdoor playground in Paris’s 20th arrondissement, with the children who made the invitations and their families in attendance. The upcycling of inexpensive materials becomes set apart from existing high fashion through this spatial context, which brings high fashion into the daily life of the local community and thus carries a meaning of resistance. Margiela’s masks were also a rejection of the industry centred around supermodels at the time⁴. By covering faces, he requested that attention be focused on the clothing, not the model’s fame. (Based on his statements below) Perhaps Glenn Martens himself indirectly acknowledged his dilemma: how to inherit Margiela’s attitude—the house’s most important legacy—in an environment so different from Margiela’s era. To overcome this dilemma, he may have deliberately sought to deconstruct “ Margiela for today” in a way that he and high fashion could achieve. For example, the suffocating masks in this show go beyond Margiela’s message of obscuring models’ fame to focus on the clothes. They can be read as representing a new anonymity that distances itself from the social media era, where everyone is engaged in self-promotion. Trompe-l’oeil can also be interpreted as going beyond the question of authenticity and replicas posed by Margiela, addressing the contemporary issue of AI-generated images that are increasingly indistinguishable from reality. “The integrity of the garment is where everything starts — the garment should speak for itself. So that is why Martin would mask his models. And I think that’s interesting and contradictory today, where in 2025 the success of runways is often at least partially based on engagement with the models on social media.”⁵ ©Maison Margiela However, those outside the house do not seem particularly interested in how this Artisanal collection maintains its attitude of rejecting the system, the core of the Margiela atelier, in a contemporary context. The “Margielaian” framework, which everyone seems to agree on and which is also the reason Glenn Martens received such praise, is limited to an analysis of how inefficient and bizarre deconstructionism, design aesthetics, and techniques recreated the archive. The comments from critics and industry insiders are a parade of vague and empty words, ignoring the implications that must be read beyond the designs and references that everyone saw with their own eyes. This is evident in the expert comments on Glenn Martens’ debut show as summarized by Vogue⁶. For example, one stylist, who praised the collection as perfectly capturing “everything that is going on around us,” does not specify what this “everything” refers to. The curator of the Palais Galliera simply lists which designs by Martin Margiela and John Galliano that Glenn Martens referenced. A magazine editor-in-chief repeats safe and empty rhetoric such as “a reflection of our fear” and “vulnerable and like a move towards liberation.” This approach is not much different whether we are looking at independent critics on social media or editors of mainstream magazines. Most fashion journalists remain within the safe terminology circulating in their world, offering critiques or simply repeating historical facts by comparing collections and archives. "Most fashion journalism has historically been keen to stay close to the big fashion houses in order to get seats at the shows with criticism duly muted.", Angela McRobbie⁷ ©John Chillingworth/Getty Images As she points out, in this process, fashion criticism has become a kind of promotional channel that explains the brand’s intentions, which can lead to sales. Although they are undoubtedly aware of this, most critics voluntarily refrain from crossing a line that could threaten a brand’s image or sales. They mainly focus on aesthetics, technology, and craftsmanship to maintain friendly relations and access. The exclusive privilege of those seated in the front row of the catwalk has significantly diminished, but the fact that criticism and analysis serve as storytelling tools to justify the industry’s social connections and the price tags of high fashion remains unchanged. Fashion criticism produces only processed and agreed-upon consensus, maintaining a structure where everyone is satisfied and no questions are asked. However, the reason Margiela is still recognized today is that the deconstruction of fashion attempted by his atelier went beyond design techniques to become a comprehensive challenge to the institutions and conventions of high fashion. The reason Margiela has become the most referenced designer in contemporary fashion—to the point where it is no exaggeration to call him a school of thought— is that he showed that there is something more important to clothing than glamour or quarterly sales growth, and (surprisingly) people resonated with this. Therefore, the term “Margielaian” and comparisons to him cannot be used as a safe compliment for design or as a model answer for high fashion. For a house whose very name has become a symbol of provocation and rejection, there cannot and should not be universal agreement at its shows. ¹ “When I arrived here(Maison Margiela), I asked my stylist to bring out all of Martin’s archive pieces. (...) I was so disappointed in myself. I was like: ‘My God, I just copied everything before when I was at Y/Project!’” Leitch, L., (2025) Welcome to Glenn Martens’s Maison Margiela - ‘It’s going to be quite loud’. Vogue Business. Available at here² A French word meaning “to deceive the eye,” in fashion it refers to design techniques that creative visual illusions. Before Martin Margiela, Elsa Schiaparelli and Jean Paul Gaultier were particularly famous for this technique.³ Pérez Hernández, N.A., (2025) Maison Margiela Artisanal 2025. Metal Magazine. Available at here⁴ At the time, supermodels like Linda Evangelista and Naomi Campbell enjoyed the kind of fame in the fashion industry that creative directors do today.⁵ Leitch, L., (2025) Welcome to Glenn Martens’s Maison Margiela - ‘It’s going to be quite loud’. Vogue Business. Available at here⁶ Kotsoni, E., (2025) “We like fashion again”: First reactions to Glenn Martens’s Margiela debut. Vogue Business. Available at here⁷ McRobbie, A., (2023) Fashion’s Click and Collect: A Labour Perspective. Verso Books. Available at here BY MUYO PARKSEPTEMBER 6, 2025 >READ THE KOREAN VERSION OF THIS ARTICLE> READ OTHER ARTICLES