MartinMargiela S/S2008 PlungingVneck Bias Ruched Halter SlitDress Black Top
About the Item
- Designer:
- Brand:
- Dimensions:Marked Size: IT42 (EU)
- Style:deconstruction (In the Style Of)
- Place of Origin:
- Period:
- Condition:Wear consistent with age and use.
- Seller Location:Chicago, IL
- Reference Number:1stDibs: LU3244222071062
Maison Martin Margiela
Belgian designer Martin Margiela (b. 1957) — whose life, career, and designs for handbags, clothing and shoes have become cult-collector obsessions — pushed those who attended his shows outside their comfort zones. In the years following the 1988 debut of Maison Martin Margiela, he toyed with creative and aesthetic paradoxes that persist in fashion today.
Consider the Spring/Summer 2001 shirt patchworked from vintage clothing labels, or his famous corset dresses made from tailoring dummies, from his Fall/Winter 1997 line. Or his oversize collection for Fall/Winter 2000. In 1992, Margiela told Dépêche Mode magazine, “My clothes appeal to women of a certain mindset rather than of a specific age or physique.”
Born in Genk, Belgium, in 1957, Margiela knew he wanted to be a fashion designer after catching glimpses of Parisian fashion on TV as a child. Although his parents discouraged this career choice as an oddly funny aspiration, Margiela enrolled in the fashion program of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp. There, he befriended and graduated a year ahead of the Antwerp Six — the acclaimed group of Belgian fashion designers comprising Dries Van Noten, Walter Van Beirendonck, Ann Demeulemeester, Marina Yee, Dirk Bikkembergs and Dirk Van Saene.
Like many of his contemporaries in the 1980s, Margiela understood Paris fashion but felt a deep resonance with the deconstructed beauty espoused by Japanese designers Yohji Yamamoto and Rei Kawakubo, of Comme des Garçons. Margiela’s fascination with Japan influenced many of his earliest collections and designs, from a dress pieced together from broken plates to his iconic Tabi boots, inspired by the split-toe Japanese worker’s shoe, which dates back to the 15th century.
Margiela decided to launch his own line while working for renowned Paris designer Jean Paul Gaultier. With Belgian designer Jenny Meirens, Margiela established Maison Martin Margiela in the French capital in 1988.
Margiela’s debut show was nothing short of spectacular. Set in a packed Café de la Gare in the still-seedy Marais district, it was also scandalous to the Parisian fashion set of the time. The designer tore up the conventions of contemporary couture presentations, most notably having his models, plucked from the streets and wearing ink-blotted Tabis, wend their way through the crowd.
The show redefined the concept of the runway in a way that would later inspire such designers as Alexander McQueen and Demna Gvasalia.
While the notoriously private designer retired from fashion in 2009, for many Maison Martin Margiela collectors, his pieces capture the irreverence of the postwar, post-punk late 1980s and ’90s. Katy Rodriguez, cofounder of the cult vintage fashion shop Resurrection, is among those who felt a connection to Margiela’s clothing in the subliminal challenges it posed to the time’s beauty norms.
“Growing up in San Francisco and coming out of the end of punk rock, not wanting to be objectified, not wanting to be seen as a sexual object, not wanting your value to be just because you’re pretty — all those clothes played into all of that,” she says. “It really was a reflection of the kind of world the young people I knew at the time wanted to live in.”
John Galliano was named creative director at the house in 2014 and it rebranded as Maison Margiela in 2015.
Find vintage Maison Martin Margiela boots, evening dresses, jackets and more on 1stDibs.
- ShippingRetrieving quote...Ships From: North Adams, MA
- Return PolicyA return for this item may be initiated within 1 day of delivery.
- MartinMargiela 1990 1stRetrospectiveCollection1994 Sheer Black Convertible ApronBy Maison Martin MargielaLocated in Chicago, ILDating this minimalist convertible transparent black chiffon rectangular garment by Belgian former fashion designer Martin Margiela to Spring 1994 among his many variations of the traditional waiter-style apron that he reworked with his eponymous Maison Martin Margiela since its first collection for Spring/Summer 1989, the iconic corner-stitched textural white-cotton brand label is stenciled with seemingly contradictory text referencing an earlier collection in Fall 1990. Instead of the blank label that had become internationally recognized among the fashion elite within the brand's initial five years--before the presence of any other tag printed with the designer name--this black print was added in this manner for only one collection during its founder's tenure. The distinct typography specified the collection season when the new Margiela design had debuted since he selected favorites to re-edition from his first 10 fashion shows. This season-less self-curated retrospective collection without any new designs was unprecedented in the ready-to-wear fashion industry, which sold only new clothes typically two to five times annually. In the early 1990s, this old-made-new-again collection was astonishing for a Paris-based high-end brand, for which any lack of fresh designs for Spring had otherwise been attributed to the loss of an artistic director or the outbreak of war. Nevertheless, there are subtle differences of color, material and draping possibilities that make our re-edition unique from the 1990 apron and from later "replicas", which was the term that Margiela printed on a different kind of label for his second self-curated retrospective in Spring 1999 following 10 more collections. Aside from the text-printed brand label with four characteristic hand-sewn corner stitches, the only other element that unified Margiela's first collection of favorites was that all the items were overdyed a darker color so that the clothes were various shades of grey, blue or black depending on the original color of the textile and how much dye the thread/yarn absorbed. The first Margiela apron...Category
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