Margiela Under Moonlight
In January 2024, a ghoulish procession sauntered through the cobbled streets of a moonlit Pont Alexandre III, positively dripping in portraiture. Like the surface of a scene lifted from Les Vampires, bearing the reactionary conceit of that film’s inspired derivation, Irma Vep, midnight in Paris was re-envisioned as a figurative trove of sins past by Maison Margiela in the fashion house’s Spring 2024 Collection—lawless and seedy in tenor, knowingly suave and evocative in hubris.
Björk, pictured in a piece from the collection, in tulle outerwear, sporting a foam fascinator and merkin–a historically inspired, high-fashion empowerment of the feminine form. Shot by Vidar Logi, courtesy of Vogue Scandinavia. © All rights belong to their respective owners. No copyright infringement intended.
With a grand emphasis on the latter, enter John Galliano: the devil behind the taut detail, who co-masterminded the immersive milieu along with makeup visionary Pat McGrath. Together their brainchild, the fine artistry of the showcase made such a splash that it cemented itself as a canon event in fashion history, wresting the attention of the press not by scandal nor the usual pontification of the formerly disgraced creative director, but by the sheer originality and craftsmanship on display. Months on, their disembodied voices inhabit the in-house production Nighthawk, a documentary that reveals their raw process, finalized to splendid form.
Ideation / The Concept
“What is a doll after all, but a simulacrum of life? Yet, devoid of the vitality that courses through human veins...” – Gwendoline Christie, Maison Margiela Artisanal Collection 2024
In its pre-emptive stages, Galliano initialized the project in terms of pictorial representations of 1930s Parisian life, entranced by the notion of modeling a lived art history. This gave way to a wide berth of references, imbibing the Gothic allure of Les Bals des Victimes, the radical hues of Kees van Dongen paintings (an interpolative technique more widely synonymous with the Fauvist movement), the deceptively eye-catching simplicity of a Madeleine Vionnet dress, and the angularity of figure achieved within the corseted subject of an Ethel Grainger piece. To lay out his influences this plainly, however, detracts from the sort of borrowing-from-here-there-and-everywhere nature of a Galliano-helmed ensemble.
The recent feature-length High and Low: John Galliano put this into perspective (a PR-driven image rehabilitation campaign masquerading as a visual tell-all memoir), the designer time and again inviting rightful controversy for his appropriation of other cultures and the working class over the years. As stated best by critics within the film, remarkably amidst all its insincerity, Galliano is an aesthete by nature; he possesses a penchant for finding beauty in things but fails to delve deeper as to the source of their meaning, or why they are the way they are. He deals more in set dressing and fledging concepts into narratives, ultimately deciding his own meaning that he runs with to frightfully theatrical effect, the looseness of the speculative material giving him room to breathe.
For this collection, which prompted the central question “Would you like to take a walk with me, offline?”, the foremost objective was to defy algorithms and trends, conjuring an entourage of inexorably kooky characters at the intersection of the real and surreal, living in his moodboard while elevating its antiquation.
Realization / The Delivery
“... My eyes are painted, yet they see not. My lips are sculpted but they speak not…” – Gwendoline Christie, Maison Margiela Artisanal Collection 2024
How Margiela bore Galliano’s initial vision to elegant fruition relied heavily on the toils of many in the atelier’s makeshift boudoir, enlivening his illustrative ideas with surgical precision. Most central to this process were the muses—Galliano’s choice word for his models—whose composure was set to channel impressions of scandal and suspicion, all while conveying a regally ragged bourgeois sensibility. Their walk, a fluid folk form, poised as inconspicuously in vampy garb against a lamppost as airily as they floated the haunts of the night, their gestural prowess carried significant weight in casting and design.
You see, it’s more than the ability to strike a pose that Galliano discerns in a prospective muse; what sets them apart is their ease of figuration, with which they are able to pick up on a phantom thread that inhabits the persona of the clothes. It’s worldbuilding in a sense, where one need not the visual accoutrements of the Seine, as it were, to “get it”. That murky ambience is all additive to the experience, for their worn bodies are the main vessel through which each interim tale is transmitted—a cirque du freak of seedy marquises, vintage marionettes, and gaunt governesses—and their honed presence certainly heightens the drama.
Show-stopping scenes from the event, each muse clad in clean outlines that cut an expressive figure–a hallmark of the occasion. Courtesy of Maison Margiela. Made available through AnOther. © All rights belong to their respective owners. No copyright infringement intended..
Cinched, tucked, and rouged with acumen, the attire comes next for Galliano, as adept a polymath in tailoring proportions and carving physique as Leonardo da Vinci was a master of replicating anatomy. A look’s expression is built to bias the viewer’s mind’s eye, through sheer awe of beholding the fabric’s ebb and flow—achieved through a pretense of seamlessness—of which the material is typically swatched and entwined somewhere along a process of natural decay. It’s an experiment in outsourcing, Margiela’s esteemed cadre dispersed to unearth fraying fibers in flea markets far-flung. Once repurposed, with utmost reverence and delicacy, they are then fitted to flatter the form of the muses, embodying the vestigial remnant in the spirit of their performance. Whether that be foam torn from an unkempt sofa and padded to carve new, clean fissures in outerwear, residual lace cut from the cloth of an archaic overcoat to be again découpé, or inexpensive bundles of taffeta, tulle, and chiffon gathering dust in the stockpile of a corner store, each textile is deconstructed to its most foundational, upcycled, and utilized in every conceivable way, its rich story told anew.
Decoration / The Finishing Touches
“... But here, in this liquid void, I am more alive in my thoughts than I ever was in the confines of my porcelain skin.” – Gwendoline Christie, Maison Margiela Artisanal Collection 2024
To us laypeople, the magic, however, truly lies within the overwhelming impossibility of it all—a complete transformation of subject, form, and backdrop. You can document Galliano’s almost empirical method in its entirety, laid threadbare, and still be in utter awe of the accomplished end result. This is due to the photorealism he achieves, ironically, by mimicking the notional essence of imagery, evoking a sense of portent through unorthodox means—airbrushing contours to weather fibers or lend them sheen, suggesting downpour via deliberately placed appliqués of beaded rain, draping bodices in the mystique of waxen cloak, and masting the overblown shape of jet-black silicon-treated tweed—without ever actually veering into hyperrealism technically. In assemblage, these layers constrain suggestion, wrapping prosthèse to imply refraction under the chandelier of the preternatural, moon-blemished night.
Take the assortment of dolls that brought fragility to the fore of the occasion, animated (most notably) by Gwendoline Christie in a show-closing, scene-stealing appearance, soundtracked to the cinematic tune of a remixed trip-hop classic: Massive Attack’s “Teardrop”. Painted to porcelain perfection under the hand of the incomparable McGrath, the Seine-sunken visages sparked a wave of mass curiosity and intrigue, with users avid to uncover the very formula that bestowed such concentrated vitality beneath the liquid glass sheen. Positioned under peeling bouffants of tape and hair, clad in corrugated cardboard, the contrast between fine china and human filament spoke to the degradation of jeunesse—as if doused in just the right amount of light in an annex so as to inflict damage—a childlike anima through which the object is both loved and discarded, serving as an eerie proxy for the future self.
Gwendoline Christie’s staunch ballerina pose displaces water, its ripples reverberating outward under lunar light. The resounding impression is that of an angel of the night. Shot by Steven Meseil for British Vogue. Made accessible through British Vogue. © All rights belong to their respective owners. No copyright infringement intended.
All in all, through pleats, cutouts, and intersecting stitches, Maison Margiela’s SS24 Artisanal Collection attained a genderless divine in every figure, nondescript, down to the subversion of the classic crimson Louboutin to echo the highly geometric, avant-garde profile of the garments. This is just one instance among many in which Galliano wove nuance to concoct an elaborate vignette of Parisian glitz, criminality, and seduction (most ostensibly, stuffing jewels into stockings to echo the heat of a riverside chase). There is no “as if” within the realm of a Margiela-studded collection, however: the French force knows how to dress a lived-in scene, capturing the cultural consciousness beyond a show’s provisory bounds. For Galliano, his work appears to be aging in reverse—a most curious case of Dorian Gray syndrome—caught in the prime of his artistic life. Yet, like a jumble of hourglass trinkets, each composing an anthology of an elusive yesteryear, its fabled eloquence was only heightened by McGrath’s visceral peel-off mask moment. Together, they molded a rich imaginarium so innovative and subversive, transcending the stale typicality of runway features of late, that they set the world of fashion alight—so trend-removed that, paradoxically, it came full circle.
