In Caroline Evans' "Fashion at the Edge" (2003), the author states that Walter Benjamin highlighted two key tropes of 19th-century Parisian commodity culture - the woman of fashion and the ragpicker. Evans argues that these two concepts are evoked in the designs of John Galliano and Martin Margiela respectively. Though at first glance the two definitions seem different, they are essentially two sides of the same coin. Both trace their origins back to the 19th century and are rooted in industrialization and capitalism.
In his collections, John Galliano frequently showcased his fascination with the Belle Epoque, emphasizing opulent 19th-century textiles, intricate lacework, embellishments like beading and feather work, fabric manipulations, hourglass silhouettes, and eroticism. Galliano's ideal woman, symbolizing wealth, luxury, beauty, and sophistication, embodied the quintessential femme fatale, eliciting desire and admiration in collection after collection.
On the other hand, ragpickers are scavengers who search for reusable materials amidst waste. Their pursuit can resemble a treasure hunt, seeking the most unlikely objects to transform into something unique (think about how army socks, combs, porcelain fragments, or champagne corks were transformed and integrated in Margiela's collections...). Similarly Martin Margiela, working like a ragpicker, represented dereliction, isolation, disintegration, and the potential for disassembling a design, reassembling it, and creating something remarkably new.
Though these two designers represent opposing perspectives, the antithesis one of the other, they share a common origin and coexist on the same spectrum.
This convergence was vividly displayed during Paris Haute Couture Week in Maison Margiela's S/S 24 Artisanal collection, where the woman of fashion and the ragpicker met, captivated the fashion industry, and went viral.
Under Pont Alexandre III after dark, with the audience seated under the bridge with the Seine flowing alongside, or inside, in a venue with wooden tables and floors, the Creative Director at Margiela, conjured up his own vision of couture portrayed by a diverse cast of misfits.
Drawing inspiration from Brassaï’s voyeuristic portraiture of Paris' nocturnal subculture in the 1920s and '30s, the collection featured hybrid creatures in Margiela's rags, that moved in one of Galliano's trademark spectacles.
French singer Lucky Love opened the show with the track "Now I Don't Need Your Love", a film provided the context and the background for the show, then models arrived. Clutching coats, men took on the personas of thieves, hungry scavengers and marionettes. Women of fashion, maybe emerging from a brothel, donned hairstyles and see-through gowns that evoked Gustav Klimt's Judith caught in sexual ecstasy. They were followed by more models, this time dressed like broken porcelain dolls and walking like zombies on wobbly legs. All these characters inhabited the banks of the Seine, traversing mud, desperation, decadence, and disease.
The collection featured a myriad of elements: corsets cinched the waists of male and female models to impossible proportions, calling to mind Mr Pearl's silhouette and crafting dramatic hourglass shapes; sheer bias-cut lace dresses conjured up visions of boudoirs; beaded and sequinned siren gowns evoked stars of the big screen; theatrical and artistic moments blended Toulouse Lautrec's Jane Avril's posters with John Singer Sargent's Madame X; jackets recombined and re-stitched complete with padded hips were worthy of Frankenstein's monster.
Some garments appeared as if they had been interred for decades or discovered on a skeleton in a coffin. Maybe they had gone through the same treatment Margiela reserved for his clothes exhibited in 1997 at the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam.
In that exhibition moulds and bacteria grew on his clothes: here, in those rusty and stained strips that transformed human hands into the articulated hands of dolls, in the tights torn at the knees and revealing not bones but the soft stuffing you may find inside dolls (developed by Simon Carl), you got the impression that these clothes and accessories teemed with germs, were smeared by urine and feces, stained with blood and infectious pus, and smelled like a malevolent mushroom.
While Galliano's women of fashion embodied visions of seductresses, his dolls encapsulated the essence of Baudelaire's ragpicker, derelict, despised and crushed, collecting things that the big city threw away, and recombining them in their clothes.
But there was also one difference, Baudelaire's ragpicker treated the waste of commodity culture as valuable, here Galliano picked something valuable and turned it into something that looked humble - think about the trench coats that seemed made of cardboard (a technique already used in Margiela's A/W 2017 Artisanal collection; other techniques employed in this collection - such as punched out fabric left hanging on a dress forming a soft sequin effect reminiscent of fish scales, and stitches on suits as if the garments were left unfinished - had already appeared in Margiela's S/S 20 Artisanal collection). Some of his dolls also called to mind Hans Bellmer's dolls, deconstructed and reconstructed, subversive and erotic, sadistic and fetishistic (and this inspiration sort of called to mind Alexander McQueen's collections borrowing from Bellmer...).
Much like Bellmer's dolls, Galliano's creations opened new voyeuristic and fetishistic possibilities, notably through a striking detail - pubic hairs were indeed visible beneath diaphanous dresses. They caused shock and scandal, became the focus of many Instagram posts, but then turned into an example of the highest craftsmanship when it was revealed that those were actually merkins, that is pubic hair wigs, made with human hairs embroidered on tulle (embroidery developed by Sian Schell).
This accessory obviously evoked scenes from erotic tales. In "The Pleasure Thieves" (Olympia Press) by Harriet Daimler (Iris Owens) and Henry Crannach (Marilyn Meeske), the protagonist buys a merkin. Harking back to the ancient Egypt where most people shaved their pubic hairs to avoid lice, but noble and wealthy people would wear wigs to show they were rich enough to keep their pubic hairs, the merkin changed purpose as centuries passed. It became an accessory to cover sexually transmitted diseases, but in modern times these curly hairs of intimacy resurfaced in films or were relaunched as a decorative accessory, a part of erotic play.
The embroidered merkins weren't the only surrealist touch that created an illusion between real and fake: the mahogany or ceramic neck and shoulder plastrons of the kind that support porcelain dolls' torsos weren't indeed made with rigid materials, but were made with leather by sculptor Robert Mercier.
There was also another element from this show that broke the Internet - the makeup, that has now entered fashion legend status as Pat McGrath turned the skin of the models into porcelain, so that garish pinks, jaundice yellows and arsenic greens were covered under a glossy layer.
The images soon went viral, the Internet erupted and theories started spreading on TikTok, Reddit and Instagram about the product that had allowed McGrath to create this effect. After more speculation and several tutorials later courtesy of makeup aficionados, beauty influencers and fashion fanatics (also the Bratz dolls joined the frenzy...), opinion split into factions - maybe it was Kryolan Liquid Glass (that quickly went sold out) or Freeman's Cucumber Peel-Off Gel Mask diluted and spread with an airbrush machine. To achieve the flawless porcelain doll effect the make up artist mainly used the products from her own Pat McGrath Labs line, but she's announced she will provide us with more details on Instagram.
There was more to notice including a Tabi shoe collaboration with Christian Louboutin that will feature six models - from pumps and ankle straps, to knee-high boots with an animalistic twist and a degradé technique to turn feet into hoofs (all featuring Loboutin's signature red sole and Margiela's split-toe silhouette, obviously).
The meticulous planning of this vision took a year, from fabric interventions to the creation of the show and accompanying film. The Internet buzzed with discussions, and the lasting impact of this presentation is evident, likely to find its place in fashion history books and to be dissected in many dissertations to come.
Grand yet intimate, decadent yet glamorous, the show revived an industry that in the last few years has been reduced to the single-minded pursuit of profit through meticulously crafted but ultimately sterile, undesirable and cold clothing and accessories, churned out with the precision of an algorithm and the craftsmanship of an artisan.
Instead, this collection felt like a nostalgic journey back to the '90s when fashion was not only a commercial spectacle but also an endeavor to offer people a theatrical dream, a compelling vision, and an extravagant yet coherent and original narrative. In the end this is what prompts consumers to buy what they may be able to afford - sure, most of us may not be able to buy Margiela's Artisanal pieces, but some may opt for an accessory from the same brand, a token to show their allegiance (but many more will just opt for Pat McGrath's make up...).
One can almost imagine owners of mega fashion conglomerates banging their heads against walls: they may have the grand rocket shows, luxurious products, diamond bags, and star designers, yet they lack the visceral impact, the broken pain, and the vision of undiluted fashion that this show had.
The imperfect perfection of life-size porcelain dolls, femme fatales and ragpickers reminiscent of cursed characters from "Penny Dreadful," suddenly became more desirable than the polished perfection we have been sold so far, because these figures looked alive, credible and part of a coherent narrative (kudos to the models who impeccably impersonated the roles inspired by their clothes).
Perhaps there was also a subtle political message embedded in it all: Bellmer's dolls starkly contrasting with the German ideology of the time, rejected the cult of perfection propagated by the Nazi party; in much the same way this was a rejection of a perfection that has by now homogenized fashion in a fascist way.
It was a strange feeling, as if fashion had rediscovered itself again. Just when hope seemed lost, it was like opening our eyes again and realizing, "Ah, this is it; this is why we write about fashion; this is why fashion reviews and critical studies still exist."
Last but not least, this is why it is worth spending a year on a project - the fabric elaborations, the ingenuity that went into the merkins and the doll details, the boiling and gluing of textiles, and the intricate threadwork (the press release mentioned a technique dubbed "emotional cutting," a term that sounds a bit like an exaggeration but that is explained as imbuing garments "with the unconscious gestures that shape our expressions: a caban pulled over the head in the rain, a lapel raised to cover the face, a trouser hoicked up to evade a water puddle").
So, yes, finally the attention was on the clothes and accessories, rather than on brand ambassadors and celebrities in the front row, obnoxious millionaires and assorted annoying influencers.
The last time there was such a frenzy at a fashion show and it was about clothes, accessories or make up, McQueen was still alive. Even actress Gwendoline Christie closing the show was not memorable for being herself, but for embodying a doll as statuesque as Toulouse-Lautrec's clownesse Cha-u-kao - powerful yet fragile, tottering on high heels, clad in pearlescent latex, a final vision of a prolonged dream (or of a terrible nightmare if we interpret the latex as plastic wrapping a corpse...).
So, after years form his fall from grace, Galliano seemed to stand up again to tell us that fashion is dead, but long live fashion as a spectacle, as a dream of dolls, of femme fatales and prostitutes, of thieves and ragpickers. Broken yet beautiful, populating a world that lives every day as if it were travelling on a doomed Titanic. Till the next show. Till the next dream. Or the next war.
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