Seen from a distance, the model wearing a feathered turban on Maison Margiela's Artisanal S/S 20 runway, may have looked like a vision out of Paul Poiret's "1002 Nights" party. Yet, a close up revealed something surreal: the turban wasn't made of luxuriously glamorous fabric, but of strategically placed savoy cabbage leaves.
There were actually more headdresses made with cabbage leaves painted in bold and bright colours, from lilac and royal blue to tangerine.
The leaves formed pretty hats that in most cases were completed by elegant veils in matching colours, but there were also bonnets made of crumpled plastic bags decorated with a fringe of marabou feathers that added a quirky and refined touch.
The vegetable or recycled pieces accessorised garments made with upcycled fabrics and textiles. In a house podcast Creative Director John Galliano explained how, together with his studio team, he realised there are too many clothes out there. Materials for this collection were therefore bought from thrift shops to provide a wardrobe for haute revolutionaries.
The upcycled fabrics were punched through (holes are a fashionable motif that in the last few years have appeared on Comme des Garçons' runway and in Dior's Haute Couture S/S 15 collection, and have recently been adopted by Virgil Abloh at Off-White) to create lace-like effects, while the bits of fabrics that were cut out were often left hanging from the holes, forming soft sequins.
There were several unfinished classic tweed and pin-striped jackets with tulle inserts or with a big bow at the neck; tailored jackets were at times sensually worn off the shoulders and oversized coats in pea green, tomato red and royal blue still had stitches in place as if they were left unfinished, while clothes cover bags (or were those bedsheets) were turned into capes.
Quite a few pieces went through a sort of "Frankenstein monster" process: one sleeve from a Fair Isle jumper was attached for example to a tailored coat; an exaggerated balloning sleeve unbalanced the linearity of a punched out column dress.
Strips of fabrics burst from the back and the front of a pleated dress, while another design seemed made with a fabric printed with hundreds of satellite images of swimming pools (a way to recycle and upcycle also the digital images produced by cameras and satellites on a daily basis?).
The designs stood out on the shocking pink background (almost a Schiap reference like the surreal cabbage leaves...), but there was also something else that stood out: a more commercial and less conceptual Reebok collaboration that resulted in a Tabi-Instapump Fury sneaker (but there were also Tabi brogues), a super ugly shoe with a Buffalo Boots twist, already coveted by Margiela's fans and probably soon to be seen on an influencer near you.
The overall effect of this Haute Couture collection was like seeing La Casati, Galliano's beloved muse, rising post-apocalypse – grand and glamorous but also decadent and essentially wearing pieces made with waste materials.
"Necessity creates the new luxury," Galliano stated in his podcast, reminding us something that, when we are low on resources, we can still be high on resourcefulness.
Maison Margiela's Artisanal line has always been about recycling, upcycling and repurposing, and Galliano has been experimenting with fabrics for a few collections now, so in a way there is nothing extraordindary new in this formula. Yet Galliano added a bit of a revolutionary meaning: in the podcast he stated that the designs were a way to rebel against bourgeoisie inspiration and the codes of bourgeoisie dress.
But you could read the collection also as a display of techniques and ideas to steal, readapt and easily replicate at home. Around 30-35 years ago, runway shows were occasions for ordinary people who may not have been able to afford a specific design to get inspired; nowadays even when we may not be able to buy a design, we crave for the original, for that logo or label that can give us status and prestige, especially on social media. Here there were ideas you may want to try - from the leftover strip of plastic used to cinch a tailored jacket to the emerald green evening gown lined with transatrent plastic and matched with a languid black tulle cape.
So this was the very final moment of rebellion - an invitation to make your own Haute Couture. That said, so far with Galliano at Margiela we have seen a lot of experiments with plastic and soft materials, but almost no iconic pieces like the museum-worthy ones previously seen on the Artisanal runways - think about mini-dresses made with combs, jackets moulded from baseball gloves or the waistcoat made from broken ceramic plates.
Maybe Galliano hasn't found a way to incorporate these rigid (and therefore less easy to use) materials in his silhouettes yet, or maybe he thinks that, for the time being, it is more urgent to recycle and upcycle fabrics. What's for sure is that after seeing textiles being repurposed in the menswear collections and at the Haute Couture shows, you can expect more recycled designs to appear on the womenswear runways. Sustainability, as noticed also by Miuccia Prada, is definitely here to stay.
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