FADE to BLACK
How one man took the brigth, printed world of Hermès and removed all colour to produce timeless fashion that is still as relevant today. Welcome to the genius of Martin Margiela. By Kenneth Goh
I have to be honest here: I was never truly a Martin Margiela fan. I know I might get crucif ied for making this statement because al l fashion journalists are meant to love Martin Margiela, Rei Kawakubo and Miuccia Prada. They are the temples of fashion. Fashion has many camps but all scribes must—or rather, should—love Margiela. Mine was a simple reason: It was so hard to shoot his clothes. When Martin Margiela took the reins as Creative Director at the House of Hermès 20 years ago, I was just starting out in my career in fashion and didn’t really understand the signif icance of this Belgian powerhouse and his anti-fashion philosophy.This was when the showmen of fashion were coming into force— Alexander McQueen’s eponymous theatrical shows and themed high drama at Givenchy; John Galliano playing out his romantic imagination to high-camp extravaganza with bells and whistles at Christian Dior; Tom Ford and his sickly sexy shows for Gucci and Yves Saint Laurent. To be faced with the austerity, so to speak, of Margiela at Hermès, was somewhat daunting. It was my biggest fashion challenge in my twice-yearly collection shoots: How do you shoot something with interest when it is so startlingly simple? How do you create drama and fantasy with clothes that portray a certain stoic resonance? How do you meld print, colour and embellishment with a sensibility that’s anti-print, largely monochromatic and counts a brown leather belt as the key accessory?
didn’t wear them. With a designer like Margiela at the helm, stylists were propelled to dress real women rather than models because their characters, personalities and warmth came through the fashion. Those were the qualities that made the fashion that much more special—it was timeless, effortless, stylish and classic.
Fast forward 20 years to the day I received a hard-cover tome celebrating Margiela: The Hermès Years. Edged in Hermès’ signature orange, the cover shows an X-ray vision of a semi-obscured torso with peroxide white hair brushed across the face to give focus to the Hermès Cape Cod watch with the double tour strap in stark black relief—a watch that was my daily accessory for years. That stylish double loop of leather is probably Margiela’s most enduring “gift” to the world. After all, there is now a version of the Hermès Apple watch with the double tour strap, which means it’s as democratic and ubiquitous as the iPhone—available everywhere and, I must admit, that is pretty egalitarian for a 180-year-old French luxury brand.
Margiela was a challenge for a young, inexperienced stylist like me— understanding the thought process that went into each collection and constructing a story around it was something I had to do. This was Hermès—you couldn’t afford to make stylistic mistakes with a House like this. An accidental pairing with the wrong shoe or a loud clash of gold jewellery could result in sartorial disaster and being banned from borrowing any more samples. Don’t forget this was 20 years ago, when there was no such thing as “streetstyle”. There were no style inf luencers and fashion shoots in print were regarded like a decree. Everything had to be perfect.
Yet within that perfection, stylists had to f ind a story to tell about the season. It could be about popular culture or current affairs but I couldn’t for the life of me f ind that au courant take because Hermès under Margiela was never trendy. So, I dressed real women in Hermès because that was what they looked chic in. More importantly, the clothes
The book was timed with a retrospective launch at ModeMuseum (MoMu) in Antwerp. Entitled “Margiela: The Hermès Years”, it’s a showcase of 12 seasons of women’s fashion from 1997 to 2003, where he instilled his exhaustive, consistent vision of modern-day luxury at the French House. When news of the exhibition was f irst released, BAZAAR’s Associate Fashion News Editor, Gerald Tan, immediately asked to cover it in our news pages, which I happily agreed to, seeing how this “true protagonist” of fashion has disappeared for over eight years since leaving his eponymous brand. Little did I know that a few months later, I would be invited to see his works in person. I was delighted to have the chance to reaquaint myself with a designer I had never quite understood. On a hot spring day in Paris, I took a train into Antwerp to witness Margiela coming “out of retirement” for a one-off project with Hermès for the theme launch of Le Sens de L’Objet (The Sense of the Object). The audience of over 250 journalists, the Dumas family and Hermès staff watched
transf ixed as real women models—some now in their 70s—described the outf its they were in; and how they looked and felt while wearing them over two decades ago, be it on the runway of Maison Martin Margiela or Hermès. Words mean a lot to Margiela and to Jean-Louis Dumas, then-CEO of Hermès. Artistic Director and sixth-generation family member, Pierre-Alexis Dumas elaborates: “Twenty years ago, in 1997, Martin Margiela was invited to present his project to be the Artistic Director of Women’s ready-to-wear at Hermès. When he met Jean-Louis Dumas, my father, he described Hermès in these words: ‘Comfort, quality, everlasting, handmade, tradition, and elegance in movement.’ Martin used the right words to describe Hermès, and he got the job!” Using a vocabulary that Margiela felt suited the modernity of his collections, these formed the lexicon that was precise in its direction, yet open in its framework.
Curated by Kaat Debo, Director of MoMu, the exhibition pits the two worlds of Martin Margiela in a dialogue with one another; blending the realms of luxury and the avant-garde into a space that shows similarities and disparities; and, most importantly, culminates in a single vision where ideas, collections and seasons are recaptured, rethought and ref ined. With the exhibition set out into 15 clear distinctions—be it casting, knitwear, or simply silhouette—I marvelled at the depth of knowledge Margiela had for the past and his exceptional love for tailoring. “With his strong sense of radicalism, Martin Margiela revealed Hermès. He reduced it to its absolute essential to give Hermès its full potential,” says Pierre-Alexis Dumas. Looking back, would I have done things differently if I’d seen the full ouevre of work Margiela had? Probably. But the fact that I made real women dress and shine in his
vision for Hermès, I think I did good.