margiela past/present/future

margiela and anti-fashion as a symbol of broader fashion relationship nostalgia

 

 

The house of Margiela is seated in an interesting position relative to this conversation

It’s a fashion house that has the same strength in defiance as all subcultures– questioning the mainstream authority– asking “how can clothes be made”, considering their artisanal work constructing garments out of plates, broken glass crystals, leather gloves, other clothes, exposing the process and commercialism of the fashion industry, which are all uncommon to the rest of mainstream fashion. Much like alternative music subcultures question “how can music sound?” to challenge the mainstream, it derives its strength from actively challenging complacency with the status quo. 

This strength in challenging power unites people to long for a perception of the past that is certain and sure, of strength in identity and outcome rather than ambiguity– though the past isn’t perfect and or as uncomplicated as it’s been constructed to be, especially as it is compared to the present.

But the house of Margiela is subject to the same construction of artificial nostalgia itself! The strength of the house’s work is acknowledged widely today, some of the most virally circulated fashion images online are of 1990’s Margiela. People celebrate and long for a better time in fashion, a dream of returning to anti-fashion, and complex discourse circulates daily about its meaning now. But the house wasn’t met with universal understanding upon its arrival in the fashion industry (though lauded by fringe fashion appreciators and buyers alike as “challenging” and “important”, his work was also misunderstood). And outside of his work, the 90’s and early 2000’s were very difficult times for fashion, politics, and identity, actually, rather than the utopian visions they’ve been made out to be now. 

Margiela’s work is important but doesn’t indicate a better time in fashion at all– actually, it points to maybe the opposite. His work was received as so “challenging” to the existing fashion system, and worked to display commercialism and its relationship with art and creative fashion, maybe the house’s work points to a worse time in fashion, and a genius who thought to investigate it, rather than a better time. 

Coincidentally and cleverly, Maison Margiela, especially their artisanal work, work to blend the meaning of the process of constructing clothes, the experience of interpreting clothes, and the outcome of producing clothes, synthesizing the symbolic meanings at once. The work invites the viewer to reconcile all aspects of the past / present / future of clothing and fashion itself simultaneously. And I think that’s where the brand derives its strength and longevity. The work poses questions still relevant today. It combines the strength of defiance (similar to any subculture), the nostalgia of doll making and the process of being enchanted by making clothes, and the still relevant critiques on the fashion system with such ingenuity, that it has resonance today, but is still challenging compared to much of today’s work. It creates a clever cycle of nostalgia itself.

THESIS: 

Margiela’s fashion house and production of antifashion work is a symbol of the nostalgia we have today that attracts people to defiance which produces the emphasis on SLEAZE and more fringe aesthetics.