Maison Margiela Artisanal Collection 2024
For the past week, I’ve been obsessed with the Maison Margiela 2024 Artisanal Collection designed by John Galliano.
It’s been a very long time since a fashion show caught my attention. Photos from the runway show went viral, and I couldn’t stop looking at the ‘naked dresses’ and bodies shaped by corsets. In an age where many women desire to increase the size of their breasts and butts through surgical procedures, I was fascinated to see how masterful design, craftsmanship and tailoring can change the shape of your body, without having to resort to these measures. I wonder what the front row seated Kardashian clan thought of all of this.
In Cathy Horyn’s Maison Margiela’s Couture Collection Will Go Down in Fashion History she writes,
The difference was the corsets, what they did to the bodies, and how we think about that extreme effect (and pressure) both in terms of how corsets were used historically and how people augment their bodies today with surgery and digital imagery. For sure, that’s the psychological, and to some extent political, aspect of the show. You understand that nothing is new, or so perverse, where human sexuality is concerned.
From Vanessa Friedman’s Why So Many People Can’t Get That Galliano Show Out of Their Heads,
The truly mind-blowing aspect of Mr. Galliano’s gift is his singular ability to invent new ways to shape material and through that, the body and sense of self. That goes far beyond the obvious use of extreme corsetry out of which the flesh spills, in all its meaty glory.
When I saw him at the preview, he was chortling over the silver swallows on a black chiffon dress, which he had finally figured out how to bead on the bias to remain square rather than twisting with the cut. Seams disappeared into embroideries as if they didn’t exist. Those models — or “muses,” as he calls them — in his show weren’t hunched over with their arms protecting their guts because they were acting. The wool coats were cut to create that effect, to give the gift of gesture without effort.
It’s easy to miss amid all the illusory drama, but it’s also a reminder: We’ve moved beyond the idea of suffering for fashion — and that’s a good thing. The dream of fashion ought to move forward, too.
The fashion runway show, which you can watch below is theatrical, haunting, fetishistic - opening with a song performance by Lucky Love followed by a short film directed by Baz Luhrmann that segued to the runway show which took place under Pont Alexandre III in Paris on a full moon night.
Of course the clothes can only be afforded by the very few, but nevertheless, as a runway show, it’s hard to deny it was a hark back to fashion shows circa 1990s-early 2000s.
John Galliano did not make an appearance at the end of the show. Whilst there’s been a lot of praise of the man and his latest creations, Kaitlin Owens reminds us to not forget Galliano’s disreputable past - “We want to buy the dream — we just want to be discerning about who we’re buying it from.”
Here’s the show.
The ritual of dressing is a composition of the self. With the body as our canvas, we build an exterior expressive of the interior: a form of emotion.
The Maison Margiela 2024 Artisanal Collection paints a picture of the practices and occurrences that shape the character reflected within our dress.
Under Pont Alexandre III, bathed in the light of the first full moon of the year, Creative Director John Galliano captures a moment in time: a walk through the underbelly of Paris, offline.
These are my favourites.
Images courtesy of Maison Margiela.