The elaborate state funeral of Simone Veil, the distinguished feminist politician, may have upset the original Margiela show space plans, but the eleventh hour relocation, back to the brand’s heart—the design headquarters in a 19th-century former religious academy (later a technical school) in the far-flung 11th Arrondissement—was a blessing in disguise. “The place has got such a lovely soul,” noted John Galliano during a preview, the day before the presentation, “and I’ve done these little intime moments before.” Anyone, for instance, who was lucky enough to have experienced John’s Fall 1994 Galliano collection, shown in the abandoned 18th-century townhouse of the tastemaking socialite São Schlumberger, will know that the designer can spin magic out of necessity. He even spent his scant resources back then on satin-backed crepe so that one fabric could present the illusion of two.
For the intimate Margiela Artisanal presentation, guests were arranged to face the studio windows that open onto views of the Church of Saint Joseph des Nations. Behind their seats, the light-flooded location had been set up as an extension of John’s own studio next door, with his whimsical 19th-century paintings and a life-size artist’s lay figure in a wicker Bath chair alongside the sketches, toiles, fitting photographs, and embroidery samples that make up the everyday life of the studio at collection times and reveal the complex workings of his design brain.
Over tea and macaroons, served on dainty rose-sprigged china at that preview, John explained that “being a bit more connected to the real world, to Instagram, and all that,” as he now is, he became fascinated by the idea of what “new glamour” could mean today. Taking his cue from its source—the Scottish word gramarye, meaning magic or enchantment—John riffed on a mood board of images that included a paparazzi shot of Marilyn Monroe, her peroxided head unmistakable in the anonymous throng surrounding her; a “very curated” image of Marlene Dietrich in her bedazzled Jean Louis illusion gown; Irving Penn’s magisterial images of the proud tribespeople of Papua New Guinea; and Kate Moss in a trenchcoat. Glamour is equal parts indefinable magic and illusion, and the image of a Tiffany & Co. box next to a strip of torn corrugated cardboard playfully alluded to the fact that both are essentially made from the same material. John explained how one night he remembered that he had forgotten to take his Brussels Griffons Gypsy and Coco for their evening walk, so he threw a belted trenchcoat over his “peignoir” and headed out, relishing “that sense of speed” and noting that “the coat could represent that sense of security.” He met friends and sat and chatted with them, relaxed in his unconventional tenue, and it sparked the idea for the collection, based around an old-fashioned, mannish coat wardrobe—a trench, a Crombie, a caban, the car coat—mashed up with the codes of glamour: a high heel, a red toenail, a backless dress, the color gold.
In the imaginative and tightly focused show itself, a trenchcoat’s gabardine was miraculously ribbed to suggest just that corrugated cardboard, another was carved out to created a boned corselet, while a man’s car coat appeared to have been customized with a Lauren Bacall neckline, and a Crombie to have been cinched to create the illusion of a 1950s peplum.
A stiff bra-molded leather bodice had been gouged with a pattern like a linocut, and shifts made of feathers clipped and embroidered into optical illusion geometrics.
Cabled and classic Norwegian intarsia sweaters, meanwhile, alluded to the old-fashioned glamour of the ski slopes. “There’s a speed to this glamour,” John explained, remembering his own trench-over-pajamas moment, and this was reflected in the artfully slapdash hair and makeup, “It’s a lip that’s thrown on,” he said, “and she hasn’t even finished washing the shampoo out of her hair!”
Even though the Margiela heroine had seemingly been caught in the act of preparing her illusions, the effect was, well, highly glamorous.
