Spring’s masks were replaced with half-painted faces, and laddered nylon stockings were worn over the house’s signature tabi-toe boots. Beyond those styling details, Margiela played with outsize proportions: Pants were wide, belts even wider, and gloves so elongated as to double as sleeves. Each model had a light-bearing escort, making sure gems like reworked denim skirts were well illuminated. Margiela, mused The New York Times, “doesn’t care much if the proportions seem strange to the eye, if the way he puts his pieces together . . . look unlike what women wear today. That’s the point of being avant-garde, isn’t it? To disturb in some way.”
