If tailoring is fashion’s new grail, or at least the template du jour for all brands across the spectrum, MM6 is in a good place. The brand’s team of creatives sent out one of the coolest lineups in Milan so far, full of hybridized, layered, spliced apart, and deconstructed/reconstructed tailored pieces. A sort of tour de force of Margielian savoir faire.
Before the show, they explained that the collection was designed following the classic MM6 concept of the group of three, a sort of modular way of assembling and disassembling garments by giving them different meanings and functions. For example, a coat made in three different materials—say, poplin, cotton, and wool—can be styled individually and mixed with other pieces, or the three coats can be worn layered one on top of the other, or they can be dismembered and their parts recombined together in new incarnations. Another example of the group of three rule was a dense print, with patterns that were offered in three-times-denser variations. Or else, three different items—a five zip boxy jacket, a denim waistcoat, and a blazer—were fused together, and engineered in a way not to look bulky at the front.
“We have seven different ways of interpreting the group of three,” said the design studio guys to this puzzled yet rather fascinated reviewer. “It’s a kind of rigorous rule, almost mathematical.” But rules are made to be broken, which is what they did for fall, breaking free from the tight TGOT concept to land on more open, lighter pieces. “We design clothing archetyped, and then we get creative with styling, mixing them together, or keeping them separate to let them breathe and play.”
Even if some pieces looked rather elaborate the results were definitely appealing, because there was always a sort of conceptual realness to them. The MM6 ethos is to make cool clothes, eminently wearable. “The concept needs to resonate with real people, we have no longing to be in fashion magazines but to be worn by people in the street in their own unexpected ways. Fashion needs to trigger emotions. And we like a sort of humbleness,” they explained. “The idea has to be strong enough that we can build on it in a humble manner. We use simple, humble materials. We don’t have an atelier, we work industrially with pattern makers, cutters. As it was in Martin Margiela’s time, MM6 is made by many people. It’s about humanity, and we build it together.”
