Maison Margiela marked the beginning of a new era bringing back from the dead the poetic flamboyance of a man who beyond being a true icon and iconoclast is a fashion artist. Galliano managed to merge his visual sexual innuendos and baroque opulence with Margiela’s beauty of the grotesque sensibilities and deconstructed aesthetic. This was a truly intricate collection, filled with (Galliano’s?) life metaphors and art references from the outset and throughout. Whether it was the Basquiat-esque red and white masks set up also as Mexican death shrines, the Louise Bourgoise style unfinished and shredded fabrics, and the Giuseppe Arcimboldo-like lacquered sea shell faces that appeared in those short coats.
The correlation between the designer’s personal and creative history and Maison Margiela’s new beginning in his hands is intricate and inherent; I cannot conceive one without the other. As a whole, it is a continuous of the house’s recurrent need for rupture; it is easy to see the hand and the mind of who conceived each garment, and there is a sense of artisan work. Nonetheless Galliano is present, his inner demons are the ones we see walking down that white sordid lab which passes as a runway. Each piece is a part of an ineffable chaos that unfolds before our eyes, Galliano’s head splattered in every design, as a dream.
***Illustrations by María È.
