Maison Margiela Haute Couture F/W 2015.16 Paris

[Phuel]

Where's that progression, through? And most importantly, to whom? It most certainly isn't coming from John, because if you quite literally replace the fabrics of most of those looks with luxurious ones, you would get an old Galliano collection in its essence; and it isn't for Margiela, because he's giving the hause a very allianted look. If anything, this is a big regression.

The problem is that he's working as if he was back at his house, point and simple. He's producing the collections he would produce there, just simply using the "deconstructed" and "unusual fabrics" to make it seem like it belong at MMM, but it doesn't. It comes out as gimmicky, deceiving and soulless. Margiela is so modern, urban, youthful, with its finger on the pulse of society. It's not pretty and glamorous. It doesn't need fantasy and romance.

Fair enough Marc.

Perhaps not a progression of moving modern high fashion to any new, unfound level. For me, it's a progression in the evolution of what Margiela left off because John isn't churning out MMM's greatest hits. I appreciate that so much more than people harping on and on about retaining the "DNA" of a house. That's a lack of confidence to me, and what John is doing here is moving forward-- with his touch, which is all the more genuine for a designer working under another's namesake. There's obviously very strong traces of John's vision here-- as it should be, but it's spliced with Margiela's style enough-- all the while not bringing Margiela's past signatures-- at least not in any obvious fashion. I appreciate how refined it all is rather than relying on all the "rawness"-- all the un-prettiness and un-glamorous characteristics you're speaking of that's often associated with Margiela of the past, as the past designers for this House have also done. That's gimmicky and a crutch to me. There's a refreshing lack of gimmicks here.

Interesting to me how we can read something altogether differently about a designer's work: I've never got the impression Margiela was ever about having his finger in the electric socket of culture. His designs always gave me the impression of discovery, of agelessness and free of any limits; if one associated his designs with youth and some version of a movement/ moment in culture, then that's fine of course, but there's more to his offering than only raw, un-pretty, and non-traditionally un- glamorous designs. I happen to like John's more polished, more refined and even, like dior_couture1245 said, "cartoony" contributions to Margiela's architecture.

 

[LANZO_358]

Still a bit too effusive and obvious for me, which makes it not quite ' Margiela'. The burlap types dresses however are gorgeous. More of those would've been appreciated. So too is the one resembling a deconstructed paint canvas. It's missing however more of that phrenic, linear, repurposed component that I've come to associate with the house, and that makes me not (yet) accepting of Galliano's take. The golds, browns and the cobalt blue, on the other hand, were lovely together.

What I don't like are the styling and the simpler (including those Dior-esque) offerings, which are so rote that they lack any real interest, novelty and intellectual curiosity. The fuller pieces scream (modern) Schiaparelli, proving that Galliano, the maximalist, comes from another time, another school, and that his type of storytelling is perhaps better served at house of that vein.

The recent menswear show was Margiela through and through. To learn afterwards that it was done by the house team reminded me of the little fairy tale, The Shoemaker and the Elves. And then it all made sense. Me, personally I'm more partial to elves.

 

[Mutterlein]

Galliano is going in the right direction.

It will never be what Margiela was, you can go to Vetements for that. But Galliano is absorbing the house's spirit and is sending back an energy that feels authentic, genuine and relevant. And he hasn't been relevant in YEARS. In my opinion this is some of the best if not the most sophisticated work of Galliano's whole career. Easily the most exciting couture of the season, and not because of the big volumes. There's an irreverence and playfulness that is, in my opinion, both very Margiela and Galliano. While I don't love everything a lot of the clothes here feel fresh and vital for a couture industry that is dwindling before our very eyes. Certainly there are pieces here I want for myself.

I hope he keeps it up for the RTW. My hopes are high.

 

[Lola701]

I've mixed feelings about it.
I really like it because it bring back a drama needed in this couture season, it's modern without being obviously modern (It's seems trendless) and because more than the previous one, it looks "Artisanal".

As a whole, i think it will satisfy a lot of people: it suits the general idea of what a lot of people think of Margiela and the grand silhouettes are totally Galliano, so they will appeal to our nostalgic minds.

BUT! for me, John is not trying at all. It looks superficial. I feel like he is doing Margiela like he is doing another couture house. And that's the problem.
Margiela did his version of Couture, he wasn't about couture. It wasn't about the technique, the craftmanship, the hours of work. Artisanal is like special project in the house.

It doesn't look effortless. Margiela clothes were effortless and even Galliano clothes were effortless. Now, it looks tortured, too much.

Margiela was about reality, a raw sensuality, the street. Galliano hasn't been about that for a longtime and maybe he needs to think about the reality before the fantasy.

I know he can do that. Margiela for him is a challenge. He can totally reinvent himself there.

I'm waiting for the RTW because the "Artisanal" for me doesn't have enough relevance in this case, for Margiela.

 

[Fashion_Girl22]

Reviews

Tim Blanks

Margiela's essence has always been transformation. That's why the house is so simpatico for John Galliano. Nowhere else could so instinctively provide the fire from which the Galliano phoenix will rise reborn. And today's Artisanal collection was one more testament to that fact.

The clothes were an elaboration on the Janus-like capacity of human beings to embrace contradictions: ugly/beautiful, caring/cruel, together/apart, chic/scruffy, and, naturally, masculine/feminine. Galliano knows all of that only too well. It meant that these were looks that harbored secrets. Twists and folds created hidden places in the fabric. One striking outfit featured Oriental silks beautifully bunched in the front, but as the model billowed back down the catwalk, we could see there was a substantial coat suspended from straps on her back. The silhouette was extraordinary. Then a recognizable something—a pocket?—would turn out to be part of a jacket that had been reconfigured from a pair of pants. A monastic floor-sweeper, blush pink, was extended into swooping wings in back. Between them nestled a little backpack, cobalt blue. Angels travel light for heaven.

Even when there was nothing there, as in a cobalt blue bib-front dress, it was the back that ruled the look. On another outfit, a gilded wheat sheaf slipped into a draped bow at the nape of the neck added a subtly poetic emphasis. If all of that rear-guard action was the psychological nub of the collection—the closest, perhaps, to where we might imagine Galliano's own head to be at—he was equally artful in his elaboration on Artisanal's traditional commitment to reappropriation. The shoes had lethal pizza-cutter spurs attached. There were dresses made of aesthetically appealing potato sacks. What other designer could put John Steinbeck on a couture catwalk? The distressed tapestry and the skirt of sampler squares rammed the point home. And was that washed leather or plain brown wrapping paper under a dense overlaid mosaic of shattered mirror? Again, what other designer could even compel the asking of such a question?

At the same time, a frond-printed suit and a dress with a twisted bodice and pleated overskirt had a glamour that was straightforward in this context. Artisanal, yes, but a reminder of the appetite that was shaping the design. And such reminders are essential, because this situation is still new and challenging for everyone. It's always been said that growth is pain. Who could know that better than John Galliano? So many questions. But at Maison Margiela, he is transmuting self-awareness into something rich, strange, and true.

style.com

Alexander Fury

John Galliano is trying to establish a new signature, and a new handwriting, for his Maison Margiela. It’s fascinating to watch it unfold - in part, because it’s quite unexpected. This, his autumn/winter 2015 collection, was his first on-schedule haute couture show in Paris helping the house. Although Margiela call it ‘Artisanal,’ in part, I suspect, because it doesn’t look anything like the rest of the haute couture, precious of fabric and painstaking of workmanship. Margiela do stuff like smash mirrors and piece them back together into a top, or whip a potato sack up into a ball gown. It’s a far cry from Karl Lagerfeld's neat cardigan suits at Chanel, or all those bubbly lurex dresses that blobbed amoebally down the catwalk of Giorgio Armani Privé.

In fact, maybe they’re not so different. They’re Margiela’s signature, and a signature style is what matters in fashion. It’s how you pull in your clientele - by offering them something no-one else is doing. There are only about a dozen designers who show couture in Paris: one less this season, as Valentino have decided to show, one season only, in Rome. So you’d better be doing something different.

John Galliano is, at Margiela. This season twenty-six looks, each a riff on an entirely individual idea, teetered out on blade-heeled shoes. There were those Margiela moments, the hopsacks, inside-out tapestries and reconfigured and relocated garments. But there was an added level of polish, and finesse. There was a sense not only of the hand, but a specific hand, which Margiela has been missing since its founder stepped down in 2008.

There was also plenty of Galliano, in topsy-turvy twisted garments, coats hanging off bodies, suspended in motion. “Draped in haste” was an odd phrase Galliano threw out to describe his tailoring. It made perfect sense. There was a haphazard, joyous messiness to this collection. It looked, again, nothing like the clothes Galliano has been creating for the last twenty years or so, harking back instead to the madcap experimentation of his earliest years as a designer - in London, rather than Paris, and certainly before he began working with the haute couture specialists that city offers. There was a lack of polish - but rather than looking roughshod, it seemed raw, genuine, untouched. There was, as the name implied, a touch of the artisan’s hand - in this case, Galliano’s.

And it undoubtedly looked like nothing else in Paris.

independent.co.uk

Bridget Foley

John Galliano is a rare creative talent. Hardly a news flash, but worth stating at what feels like the threshold to his full reimmersion into mainstream fashion. Baggage aside (his clothes are what’s under review), when realized to its fullest — which, anyone who’s been around a while knows, wasn’t always the case — that talent is a thrill to observe.

On Wednesday morning Galliano proved himself once again that designer in full. His Artisanal couture collection for Maison Margiela was a masterwork of invention and craft. In the house codes-designer balance, his own perspective won out but didn’t annihilate; the collection was more Galliano than Margiela with invocations of deconstruction — he now calls it “draped-in-haste” — a point of significant fusion.

Galliano fused far-flung references, some obvious (Japanese, Chinese, Yves Klein, his own archive), others arcane and highly personal. And he sourced from around the globe — Chinese mud silk lining, Aran knits, Madagascan raffia, a French tapestry, his beloved British tweeds. He worked them all with incredible technique, for example, in twisted takes on the smoking and a pair of men’s pants morphed into a jacket, the legs knotted in back over a sequined dress. And remember the old line about the girl pretty enough to look good in a burlap potato sack? Has Galliano got a coat for her.

He had his way with decoration throughout. He arranged mirror shards into rose-motif aprons over a mannish coat and a dress in vintage lamé, and drew faint flowers randomly onto a gown (worn backward) and cut them out halfway for an appliqué effect.

There were signature flights of fancy in a green coat with a giant flying buttress collar, the bride in swirls of taffeta and thick pillow rolls of what looked like dry cleaner’s plastic, and in the graphic face paint on some of the models. Such moves harkened to another time, absolutely. These suggested not a time warp but a statement of artistic self. They also indicated range from the fantastical to the real, injected into a lineup that also included an unfettered alpaca dress slung from green panne silk straps and a lean suit that one might call simple were it not for its giant dot pattern overprinted with two huge palm fronds, one on a sleeve, the other, the skirt. Then there was the long, dusty pink coat, seemingly plain. But it was made from hand-painted Neoprene mesh with two sculptural arcs framing a bright blue obi bow in back — breathtaking.

As for the footwear: Shoes were mounted onto high, thin, mirrored half-circles. One or two girls stumbled along the way, but their journey fascinated. Just like Galliano’s.

wwd.com

Vanessa Friedman

So it was interesting that though John Galliano’s collection for Maison Margiela also touted the word “startling” in the show notes (Mr. Galliano, as per his new Margiela persona, wasn’t saying anything for himself), the clothes themselves, as well as the context, seemed to retreat from the proposition.

The makeup was subdued — just a slash or splash of white or blue stencil on the face — as was the music (an acoustic version of Marvin Gaye’s “I Heard it Through the Grapevine”). And the looks? A mashup of global influences: English tweed and Moroccan pompoms; Andean alpaca and French panne velvet; tailoring and flou — all of it deconstructed and recombined, so jackets hung behind backless slip dresses and topped fuzzy cellophane skirts; a vintage French tapestry was backed by silk organza and cut into a shift dress; and an ivory flapper frock sported sagged tiers in the front and sliced out rose petal cuts in the back.

It might sound outré, but it wasn’t really; certainly not in the context of Mr. Galliano’s past work, or the artisanal collection itself, which was based on the idea of taking found objects with trashy identities (plastic combs, buttons, fabric scraps) and elevating them until they were entirely transformed. Indeed, it used to be one of the few truly shocking moments in couture. Half the time, you could not believe your eyes. Literally.

Now the ingredients may be disparate but they are also recognizable, as is the vernacular, which is fully Mr. Galliano’s own. The result is less subversive than restrained and respectful. Le frisson, c’est fini.

nytimes.com

Suzy Menkes

It seemed like back to the beginning at Maison Margiela, where John Galliano's 'Artisanal' collection suggested the work of a penniless but ingenious artist who uses found objects as his tools of creation.

Of course, taking a humble sack, decorating and draping it into a painted haute couture coat is not so new to the designer, who famously introduced the French word "clochard" - a hobo or beggar - into the vocabulary of couture while he was at Christian Dior.

And the concept of recycling is integral to the history of his current brand, and its founder Martin Margiela.

So in one way it was refreshing to see Galliano exchange formerly lavish sets for a long plain background, just as he had done for his first comeback collection in January this year - which was shown in London, not Paris.

Yet starting over is not easy, under the cruel spotlight of fashion, where a wedding dress wrapped in sausages of white, serving as make-do ruffles, looked like something from a university student's final show.

I wondered what message, I Heard it Through the Grapevine, which played repeatedly, was supposed to send? That Galliano was not shouting his return, but letting the message percolate slowly? Yet the clothes and the makeup, which included bruise-like smudges on the face or dark stains from hair to cheek, were not signs of a shrinking violet.

Programme notes talked about "cross pollination... divining an accidental and unconscious glamour". The notes also defined the impenetrable fabrics as "swathes of Chinese mud silk meet British tweed", and "Madagascan raffia" which "adorns painted neoprene".

It is tough to think of this collection as Maison Margiela, rather than a series of Galliano's personal fashion statements. Some of which were striking and wearable, especially a skirt of patchwork crochet squares, topped by a neat black jacket.

Big coats were bold and beautiful, including one with a gathered back, which held a Yves Klein blue satin attachment like a sculpted backpack.

Even ignoring the peculiarity of shoes with Perspex wings at the heel, there were many ideas from Galliano's still fertile mind that could be transferred into more wearable ready-to-wear.

But the Margiela show, on the final day of a truncated Paris couture season, got to the heart of the matter. What is haute couture in the twenty-first century? Is it still the 'laboratory of ideas' that became a cliché for over-exaggerated outfits designed to attract photographers in a classic, client-led collection?

It is apparently not difficult to find people who can spend time and money on high fashion. The addition to the season of Fendi Furs, designed by Karl Lagerfeld, and Valentino and Dolce & Gabbana, who are showing in Italy, proves that there are plenty of big spenders.

I would like to think that an imaginative client will pick up some of the finest Margiela 'Artisanal' pieces and work closely with John, as couture should allow.

vogue.co.uk

 

[CholoChic]

How to wrap yourself



stylebristo.com
style.com

 

[GivenchyHomme]

Sorry but I can't see any fantastic outfits...oh wait, it's cool to like this brand

That is not correct. It's completly okay to like a brand that's innovative, beautiful, and lively. It's not easy to wear and it's not supposed to be. It's fashion. If you want to talk about liking brands because they're "cool" just take a look at all women wearing Raf's Dior. LVMH has propelled Raf into the mainstream so now everyone wants a piece of that cake whether it's basic or not. MMM however, is fresh and interesting. The hype is justified by what we see, not how it's marketed.

 

[Fashion_Girl22]

 

[Fatalefashion]

Maison Margiela | Artisanal F/W 15.16 | Original Song

 

[Fashion_Girl22]

Maison Margiela | Artisanal F/W 15.16 | Original Song

That's still not the original soundtrack from the show, but it's so much better than the God-awful movie trailer music featured in the official video. Thanks!

As thrilling as I find the collection, the venue and overall production of the show does it a great disservice; the spacing between the looks is incredibly awkward, as is the distance of the audience to the runway. Something more intimate and fluid, like the first artisanal show in London, would have been a better fit. It would be nice if Betak was still producing Galliano's shows, but I doubt that can ever be a reality again now that he's working on Raf's Dior presentations.

 

[perhydrol]

It's interesting that the show started when they opened the door, I can remember the guy who closed another door after the s/s 15 presentation which was the last show of Blazy for the Maison. I doubt they knew that connection, but still it's quite fascinating. It's like opening a new chapter for the MM.

 

[Phuel]

Thanks to all for the videos. The Marvin Gaye track version of the show is wonderful-- so light. Thanks Fatalefashion.

I think the production is so effortlessly fresh-- that combination of casual grandness, polish and ease fits beautifully with Galliano's vision of Margiela. So much better than had it been given the predictable treatment of dark warehouse locale with some Phillip Glass-type composition.

It's great to see Galliano back to doing what he loves-- and doing so very well. The craftsmanship; the masterful designs that's respectful to Margiela's history without the mimic and redundancy, and still true to who Galliano himself is as a designer; the thoughtfulness of each piece as an individual that builds altogether towards a consistent vision... I find it all so inspiring from the deluge of... excessiveness, gaudiness, or simply plain blandness that Haute Couture has become.

And the cast and their casual demeanor with the attention to individual looks is just so right. The model in the polka-dot dress that's part gown and part ceremonial kimono, reminding me of a very young Veronica Webb seals that perfect mixture of posh and ease for me. And the quick flash of those stainless-steel heels as the models turn at the end of the runway adds just that right note of drama for me. Such refine touches in this presentation without feeling overwrought or forced. So good. And the only HC collection worth remembering this year for me.

 

[CholoChic]

It is rare nobody mencioned it, but the potatoes dress, reminded me all this time to Marilyn Monroe potatoe dress (A lot of people said Tomatoe but it is Potatoe)

source: arts-stew.com

source: vintag.es/

source: scottbeveridge.blogspot.com/

I think there must be lots and lots of references, John loves mix and turn down inspirations.

 

[jescajade]

It is rare nobody mencioned it, but the potatoes dress, reminded me all this time to Marilyn Monroe potatoe dress (A lot of people said Tomatoe but it is Potatoe)

I think there must be lots and lots of references, John loves mix and turn down inspirations.

I mentioned it in my review, there are so many references in the collection,its amazing how each piece has a different story to tell, Galliano really impressed with his research.

 

[Pricciao]

^ The potato sacks are referencing Native American history, not quite sure the exact background but that's what I remember.