Challenging perceptions are the entire raison d’être of MM6 Maison Margiela. With the new Avant Premiere collection, the house took recent discoveries one step further, tapping into both new and old and merging them with sleight of hand. For example, what would happen if a leather perfecto were edited flat (instead of just looking like that on screen)? First, it makes that easy garment lighter; much of its weight has been removed by trompe l’oeil and the lapel is now permanently beautiful. The same goes for a white shirt, a trench coat: suddenly something familiar looks different, but there is still more to the story than meets the eye.
That’s because it doesn’t really involve a lapel, a pocket (a focal point of the season), a distressed knit, or the sleight of hand it takes to create couture-like “tulip” finishes from a turned waistband, or to body-con jersey. resemble boutis, a traditional Provencal style of quilting. Rather, they are the manifestations of a deep dive into gestures – the ones required to make the clothes, of course, but above all the gestures that come with functionally and fully inhabiting them and, more often than not, a signal of participation a joke.
There are many references to the original Margiela canon (for starters, that boutis has roots in the 1990s). Stonewashed denim with a crinkled finish is a nod to the designer’s riffs on early 2000s hip-hop culture. Some in the MM6 studio remember the time like it was yesterday, others wish they could, and the result is a layering of memories that resemble what could be extracted from a remix or contemporary art, but turned into dust. A duvet coat from the groundbreaking Fall 1999 collection revises the idea diagonally (but shorter and to the side, with pockets) while staying right on point. The base of the house can also be ironic in a bear motif from a real vintage children’s quilt, shown here as a patch with a martini glass on top. One generation’s bad boy is another’s mogul. Chaotic times call for comforting clothing. Where else but in fashion can these two commentaries – plus many others – coexist?
Another duality, this time between city and countryside, provided the springboard for a first foray into ready-to-wear for MM6’s long-term collaboration with Salomon. The premise was to embrace the inevitable ‘crunchy’ aspect of high-end gear and lure it into anti-athleisure territory. It worked great on a Gore-tex macintosh. Speaking of functionality, a cargo pocket harness, extrapolated from a spring 2004 multi-pocket vest but now done in leather, also took that idea to a new place. It was an apt metaphor for the house’s groundbreaking philosophy: there is no ‘cool for cool’s sake’. In the MM6 world, true style comes from a very different place.
