MM6 is usually pretty reverent to the work of its founder Martin Margiela, but for resort 2022, the design team found a new sort-of-muse in the French Surrealists. (To be fair, Breton, Dalí, Schiap, et al. were probably on Martin’s moodboards too, having been the first to turn shoes into hats and hair into coats.) So a bit of history first: In the late 1910s or early 1920s, depending on whose account you believe, André Breton, Marcel Duchamp, and some artist friends devised a game called Cadavres Exquis. The premise is simple: Fold a piece of paper into four segments, each artist makes a drawing on the first quarter and extends the lines of their work just a smidge past the second fold. The papers are passed around, with previous drawings folded down to be hidden from the new artist, until you get to the end of the sheet. The result is a collaborative illustration fusing multiple creative styles, often somewhere between fantasy, horror, comedy, and irony.
This season, the MM6 design team decided to create a Cadavres Exquis of a collection. Each designer worked on their own ideas for a single piece, the results of which were revealed to each other as they began to produce samples and style the pieces together. The collection is a mish-mash of neon orange leather moto jackets and slim trousers, doubled shirt dresses, slashed skirt suits, and worn-in denim and knitwear. It’s a bit chaotic and all over the place—but what isn’t right now? Doing a bit of everything feels strangely right for this moment in fashion.
The MM6 team’s isolated way of working produced some absurd pieces, and I mean that in the best way possible. There are hair shirts with trompe l’oeil brown locks on shoulders and back (wear them with the label’s popular spring 2021 hair extension headbands). A big romantic knit depicts a phone-snapped image outside the MM6 studio window. Jeans are positively ginormous, swallowing the rubber-soled mary-janes and boots underneath. And earrings come complete with their own styrofoam displays. After all the sadness and strife of 2020 and 2021, it’s nice to see a design team actually having fun with fashion.
