2024

Margiela is having a moment. For the past two years or so, Maison Margiela (and its diffusion line, MM6) has drifted from one side of the cultural bell curve to the other - from a brand beloved by connaisseurs to a mainstream fashion brand. Its aesthetics and codes have become fossilized into a simulacra of themselves, primed for endless declination and merchandising. Seemingly paradoxically, few other Houses in recent memory have so successfully leveraged the upmarket halo of Haute Couture as a mass visibility driver. 

From the infamous “Tabi thief” to the recent departure of John Galliano as creative director, Margiela is enjoying the spotlight of cultural conversation. That’s not a coincidence - in a way, the House’s current market position reflects a longer-term trend of leveraging perceived proximity to contemporary culture and art to drive symbolic value. It’s a position that’s shaped the luxury market over the past few decades - and will continue to do so in the years to come. 

1/From “IYKYK” to Mainstream Hype

Let’s begin with the Tabi. Inspired by split-toe socks dating back to 15th-century Japan, Martin Margiela placed Tabi boots on the very first model he sent down a runway in 1988. The ever-divisive (literally) shoes quickly became an iconic part of MM’s design lexicon. Over the next 30-odd years, they were coveted by fashion insiders as the kind of “ugly” piece of which the appreciation denoted a certain level of cultural capital. 

Maison Margiela and MM6 - the premium brand positioned more like a little sister than a diffusion line - have merchandised the hell out of the Tabi. There are Tabi boots, sneakers, ballet flats, clogs; collabs with Reebok and Clark’s.

Today, they’ve become symbolic of the kind of massified, TikTok-driven democratization of fashion knowledge, a signifier of just before the crest of the bell curve market positioning. Like an SSENCE meme or a High Snobiety article, they’re a “you’d have to get it” that everyone already gets.

In September 2023 - while the Tabi was already at the crest of a celebrity hype wave - a TikTok user named Lexus posted a viral video about a Tinder date, Josh, who stole her Tabis. The ensuing visibility cemented the shoe’s recognizability in mass culture, picked by outlets like the New York Post. By fall 2024, the fashion press was ready to declare the Tabi “normie.” 

Margiela holding OTB Group - (“Only the Brave”) - would seem to be enjoying the fruit of this kind of cool kid cultural relevance. First quarter reporting in 2024 saw the Group grow 10% to reach nearly 2 billion in revenue, driven largely by renewed investment in the visibility of brands like Diesel and Margiela. These are small numbers in the luxury industry, and suggest that the market hasn’t quite reached saturation. The challenge ahead would be to maintain Margiela’s brand halo while capturing growth by volume - and for that, they’d turn attention upwards.

2/From Contemporary Art to Cultural Merch

This week, Business of Fashion reported that 300+ early Margiela pieces would be sold at auction by Paris-based Maurice Auction. This sale - which follows similar offers by Sotheby’s in 2019 and 2021 - was widely picked up by the fashion press as an indicator of Margiela’s enduring aesthetic contribution outside the primary market.

More broadly, it’s further evidence that Margiela’s cultural legitimacy doesn’t rest on hype alone. 

As Natasha Degan notes in her book Merchants of Style: Art and Fashion After Warhol (2023), Martin Margiela’s arrival at the forefront of luxury coincided with a broader push to co-opt the vocabulary of contemporary art in an effort to create market legitimacy.

The term “deconstructionist” was first used to describe Margiela’s work in 1989, and Martin Margiela would go on to develop a design vocabulary and experiential approach to his work that echoed both contemporaneous and historical trends in the art world - ranging from Duchamp’s readymades to the Minimalists of the 1960s; the “visible process,” or indeed participatory shows that drew on the emergence of relational aesthetics (Degan 2023)

Overtime, this revolutionary vocabulary has been distilled into a distinct griffe that draws on the artistic trends embedded in Margiela’s work. The use of white, particularly white paint, draws quite explicitly on the work of Robert Ryman. Similarly, the exposed stitching which, for years, signaled Margiela garments to insiders in place of a label, is analogous to broader movements in art and design that placed emphasis on concept and theory - leading to the use of “deconstructionist” to describe his work (Degan 2023).

Human hair, assemblages, plastic - even the appropriation of Japanese clothing, as in the Tabi, firmly anchors Margiela’s work in the context of broader visual and conceptual exchanges occurring in the art and design world in the 80's and 90's.

These once-revolutionary aesthetic modes have been expertly quantified, commodified, and fossilized into a set of recognizable, infinitely reproducible brand signifiers primed for merchandising. Once subtle marks of fabrication, they became sites of distinction and cultural capital that have since been transformed into tools for conjuring the aura of high culture to drive commodity value. 

The recursive relationship between the perception of high culture and mass commodity is reinforced by continued efforts to create a halo around Martin Margiela himself. Building a narrative that positions MM as an artist - rather than a designer of commercial objects - maintains the singularity, symbolic value, and even “aesthetic purity” of the brand itself.

Margiela’s work has been the subject of retrospectives at the Fashion Museum of Antwerp, the Museum at FIT, and the Palais Galliera. His tenure at Hermès is the focus of a number of publications, several Instagram accounts, and 80% of my personal Pinterest.

Finally, as in the contemporary art market, sales at auction drive value in the secondary market, which contributes to primary market demand. They signify the continued cultural relevance, and thus desirability, of the artist/designer/producer, a light which shines over primary market pieces. Of course, Martin Margiela himself has been out of the fashion world since 2009. And in that sense, he’s like a “dead artist” - a safe investment guaranteed to maintain its value, sheltered from the volatility of the cultural market.

While Maison Margiela and OTB Group likely had nothing to do with the auction - most of the pieces were donated by private collectors - they certainly stand to benefit from earned media buzz and the halo of intemporality and value it generates.

3/From Private Collection to Open to the Public

Say what you want about John Galliano (and I have, and I will) but man, that Haute Couture collection.

Maison Margiela 2024 Artisanal Collection - “Nighthawk” - was shown in January 2024 to widespread critical acclaim, generated significant earned media value, and made a household name of already-legendary makeup artist Pat McGrath. The show was lauded as a return to the ethos of Haute Couture, as an image of fashion and theatricality at its best, and a summit of the creative vision of John Galliano. 

First, let’s talk about Haute Couture and what it’s for.

“Haute Couture” itself is a protected label given by the Fédération de la haute couture et de la mode (FHCM). As of 2023, the Chambre syndicale de la haute couture included 16 official members, 9 “correspondents” and 12 “invited members.” Some of the most visible and mediatized Haute Couture collections of recent years were by guest members (Balenciaga), while some of the longest-standing official members I can promise you haven’t heard of. 

Generally speaking, there’s a misconception that Haute Couture represents the “best” of fashion, uncommercial pieces that cast an aesthetic glow over the rest of the House’s production, and fashion itself more broadly. The reality is more complex than that. At its core, Haute Couture is a distinct economy that runs parallel to prêt-à-porter. Haute Couture collections are not all alike, and the Houses that produce them - there are only a handful - approach them in distinct way.

Houses tend to position Haute Couture collections across 4 key semantic axes: as legitimate culture, even art; as a creative feat (either in terms of savoir-faire or as the expression of director’s vision); the process of creation itself: and as a reflection of clients themselves. 

Maison Margiela Artisanal lies somewhere in the middle of the first two. A member of the FHCM since 2005, the House tends to position the collection as an expression of the artistic hand of the Maison - savoir-faire not as craftsmanship but as the mastery of aesthetic expression. It’s the kind of value you’d ascribe to a Jackson Pollock painting, rather than a Fabregé egg.

Under the creative direction of Galliano, Margiela has taken a theatrical approach to Haute Couture - that’s coherent both with Galliano’s work at Dior and with Margiela’s participatory, performance-art inspired shows. In 2022, the House showed (and live streamed) a literal play at the Palais de Chaillot.

Unlike previous seasons, however, the House built a program of cultural activation around Nighthawks designed to center the collection in cultural discourse. In addition to a film, the House created an expansive exposition in Tokyo featuring pieces from the collection, discussion around Galliano’s creative process, and more.

Activations like these drive engagement and “shareability.” If Haute Couture has recently struggled to find a sense of purpose in the fashion system, Maison Margiela expertly leveraged a rare moment of collective wonder to bring everyone into the fold. Superior craftsmanship or a brand label itself is no longer enough to create value for luxury. Maison Margiela was able to capture something close to the awe and emotion of art itself, and bottle that into commerciality.

In doing so, they perhaps unwittingly followed a playbook written by Murakami, Kusama, and Warhol - artists who were able to anchor themselves irrevocably in cultural discourse by striding the line between commerciality and creativity. 

Conclusion

Last week, when John Galliano published an emotional letter announcing he was stepping down from the House, I noticed little hand-wringing about the future of Maison Margiela. No one seemed concerned that his absence would harm the House’s collections, much less its financial future. That’s not a dig against Galliano - far from it. It’s a sign that Maison Margiela has, in some ways, successfully transcended the volatility of the market. Firmly established with a set of historic design codes with roots in “high culture,” a strong Fashion-with-a-capital-F legitimacy upheld by Haute Couture, and a generation of cool kids wearing Tabis.

Indeed, the challenge for Margiela going forward won’t be building hype outside the trend cycle - it will be maintaining the long-term cultural legitimacy that bolsters its symbolic value.