The most unsettling side effect of a socially distant world is the upside-down, inside-out feeling it evokes in your soul. Everything is not what it seems; time is mutable and purpose is stripped away from even the most mundane acts. MM6 is feeling it. The brand’s fall 2021 collection is completely topsy-turvy. Its PR team sent out thank-you notes to editors days before MM6’s video debuted at Milan Fashion Week. The film, set in a cabaret in Paris, takes place in reverse, starting with a finale walk and confetti, and ending with models getting ready. At this rate I almost expect to get an invite to the show four days from now.
Doing things backward was the brand’s aesthetic starting point this season. Patent trench coats and suit jackets are back-to-back—no fronts!—while jeans are turned inside out and reversed, with rips and tears behind the wearer’s knees. A pink silk camisole, evocative of Martin Margiela’s famed all-pink fall 1995 collection, is inside out and raw-seamed. Some pieces, like the shearling coats and leather jackets, are reversible; others feature a double-face portrait of Erik Satie that becomes Maurice Ravel when turned upside down. Knitwear was particularly strong, unraveling at shoulders and trailing behind models like capes—unspooling (how everyone feels right now) but doing so beautifully. This use of Margiela-level ingenuity in the service of beauty and function marks one of MM6’s best outings of late, a gentle, soulful reminder of the human touch behind one of fashion’s most legendary brands.
