Margiela at the movies—sounds like an invitation to an absurd comedy of Buñuel proportions. But despite the setting (Le Trianon, an old music hall and movie house in the 18th) and a short film (by the Maison and Simon Eléphant), MMM turned out a very wearable menswear collection.
Transparency was the word of the day, with loose-weave sweaters revealing shirts (and, in some unbuttoned cases, flesh), jackets telegraphing their linings, and straight-legged pants rolled to reveal vivid colors underneath. There were forays into the oversize (as in cotton crepe raincoats and jackets) and into mash-up hybrids (like a Perfecto-style evening jacket you could see a roué like Olivier Zahm strutting quite swaggeringly in). A few dips into various pools of cool helped to ratify two emerging mini-trends of Spring '12 menswear: scarf prints and matching-pattern head-to-toe looks.
