I Cried Watching the Margiela Show - Part II
Galliano, more McQueen, pubic hair and the Catholic Church
On January 25th, under the Pont de Alexandre III in Paris at nightfall, Maison Margiela's Creative Director, John Galliano, released the Margiela Artisanal Couture Spring 2024 show. In the days previous, I had actually been paying a fair amount of attention to fashion week. I spent long hours on Instagram looking at photos and videos of the shows and watching analysis by critics (an altogether very loose term that encompasses both actual fashion critics and people in grimy sweatshirts lying in bed, fiending to judge something).
Fashion week content provided a comfortable way to numb myself as the house-sitting gig I had taken became increasingly uncomfortable. Temperatures had dropped, and the owner's cats spent more time inside, play-fighting, crunching on kibbles, and dismembering mice loudly under my bed during all hours of the night (I wish I was joking). Freezing and running on interrupted sleep; all I wanted to do was forget my mortal coil, scroll through my feeds, and imagine that I was worlds away sitting front row at Rick Owens.
When the first videos of the Margiela show were released, I thought someone had created edits of a fashion show from the nineties. I can't possibly begin to explain to you how impactful and stunning the whole collection was, both from a purely technical angle (the construction of the clothing felt a lot like a game of Jenga, in which shapes and weights were skewed and distributed unequally) and also through ‘worldbuilding’ prowess: Galliano not only managed to create a collection that was instantly iconic, but that also re-solidified and re-introduced the discomfort, beauty, love, and savage nature present in so many couture shows from the nineties. Simply put, there has not been a collection this groundbreaking and wholly awe-inspiring since probably 2004.
Some highlights from Margiela Artisanal Couture Spring 2024. View the whole collection here.
British designers who rose to fame in the early ninties like Alexander McQueen and John Galliano, were singular and, to this day, unmatched in their honesty, grit, and rawness, blurring the lines between fashion and performance art. Sit down and watch footage from shows like McQueens '96 Dante collection or Galliano for Dior's Autumn/Winter 2000, and you will notice that there lies within the art direction a profound lack of the pristine. Today, with the rise of the 'Instagram face' and our increasingly frictionless lifestyles (detailed superbly in this essay on friendship in the digital age by Rosie Spinks), the aesthetics of popular culture, specifically fashion, have become increasingly digestible, banal, and easy on the eyes (sorry, Khaite and The Row).
To give you a taste of what designers like McQueen were creating, Dante (focused on the balance between war and peace within the context of Western religions, held in a Catholic church in London built by supposed 18th Century Satanist Nicholas Hawksmoor) was comprised partially of images from the Vietnam war printed on fabric. In my opinion, creating wearable textiles from traumatic images is disrespectful only if you view the context (in this case, clothing and design) as frivolous and irreverent. Using those words to describe McQueen's work laughably misses the mark. Regardless of what you think about the ethics of this, Sarah Burton, the most recent Creative Director of McQueen, is not taking such provocative liberties in her work today.
Featured in Dante were McQueens iconic ‘bumster’ pants: so delightfully low-rise that they cut into the models’ nether regions, their butt cracks and pubic hair spilling over the top. All of this in a consecrated Catholic church. I love McQueen.
Alexander McQueen’s Dante, 1996
There are striking differences between videos of shows before the early 2000s and those today that go beyond shaking, grainy camera footage. Attendees at Dante appear as a huddled mass of black and beige, hollering and clapping, nearly spilling over into the crucifix-shaped isle of the runway, wearing biz-cas and hoodies. Models stuck out their tongues for the camera, fixed their hair, and appeared very languid, loose, and, well, more like normal people. Watch footage of any show from the last few years, even McQueen (and, god forbid, I literally can't believe this, the Margiela show from January), and the front-row attendees are silent, glued to their phones as if on the subway, either taking videos or texting. Models today are so fit, tall, and conventionally attractive that they look like cyborgs. As an attendee, dressing for a fashion show is now an opportunity to see and be seen, seen both in person, in the press, and by millions on social media. Today, no one would be caught dead at McQueen wearing some nondescript overcoat and a scarf. Fashion week is 15% collections and 85% 'who wore what when.'
All this research has me thinking about when I attended Milan Fashion Week in 2017 and 2018. Even though this was only six years ago, there was less focus on social media coverage and attendee outfits as there is today. After the show, my friends and I chatted with the models outside Etro and we finagled our way into the venues for Versace and Missoni. Security was loose, and no one paid any attention to the fact that we were clearly all wearing Zara. What's changed? I guess I have to go back to Milan to find out...ugh:)
Holistically, the levels of nuance and complexity of messaging in collections like Dante were palpably higher before the rise of social media. At first pass, many would not consider McQueen's work beautiful, and indeed, that was not his goal, at least not directly. He forced and forged massacre, war, and pain into a spectacle so grand and blasphemous that it was akin to beauty in the way that it captivated the hearts of the audience and the larger fashion world.
Today, I don't think we have the patience for his level of technical excellence and mess, or for such an intellectual challenge to exist within the shows we consume. We also do not have the space within our culture to digest art, particularly fashion, that pushes ethical buttons. Personally, I don't believe there is (or ever will be) anyone like him, but what Galliano accomplished with Margiela on January 25th was the loudest whisper of McQueen's world that I have heard in my lifetime.
xx
Part III to come! As a side note, Parts II and III were originally one long piece, but it came out to about 3,500 words. You’re welcome!
Also, if anyone has $3000 lying around, my Venmo is @Allie-Wells-2. Seperate payments are OK.
