“When we first met,” Martin Margiela said in a 2010 interview with Grazia, Jean-Louis Dumas “asked me anxiously if I was going to cut the Kelly in half because, at the time, the press used the words grunge and destroy to describe my work.” In fact, fashion’s leading deconstructionist was a preservationist at heart, one who was inspired to dismantle conceptions and seams in order to rebuild: “When I recut clothes, old or new,” he told Vogue, “it’s to transform them. It’s my way of bringing them back to life in another form.” At Hermès, what he dismantled was the need for conspicuous consumption by creating a wardrobe of such quality and adaptability that it obviated the need for (many) more clothes.
Though the surface markers of the old French house didn’t interest him at all, Margiela had a deep understanding of its soul: craftsmanship and fine materials. As a rule, he refused to create scarf prints, but he did apply the technique of hand-rolled seams to garment finishings, and, for 2001, he finally responded to the management’s plea for a scarf with the losange. Long and narrow, made of a solid color of monochrome silk twill crepe with contrasting edges, this was the scarf stripped bare—and all the better for it. It appeared throughout the Fall collection paired with sleeveless blouses and men’s suits for women. If the losange offered a taste of luxury, Margiela’s reverse kidskin “portés par deux” (layered double coats) delivered it in a great dollop. The icing on top? Matching cross-body muff bags.
