Margiela debuts new store concept on avenue Montaigne; as the house’s founder announces a concept exhibition in Paris

By

Godfrey Deeny

Published
Dec 14, 2020

The house of Maison Margiela has debuted a new store on Paris’ toniest shopping street, avenue Montaigne, designed to reflect the visual language established at the house by creative director John Galliano.

While the brand’s founder has also been busy; as Lafayette Anticipations – the key contemporary art space in the Marais – announced plans on Monday an upcoming and exciting new concept exhibition developed by Martin Margiela himself.

The independent double whammy underlines the longevity and breadth of appeal of Margiela, generally regarded as fashion’s most important conceptual designer.

“Since the 1980s, his approach has profoundly changed the world of fashion. Indeed, he never ceased to extend the possibilities there, through parades, materials and silhouettes that have become conceptual and aesthetic revolutions. The exhibition presented at Lafayette Anticipations, conceived as a total work of art, continues Martin Margiela's obsession with transformation,” explained Lafayette Anticipations in a release.

The exhibition will debut on April 15 and run until July 25 in Lafayette Anticipations, an avant-garde cultural center created by the department store group, Galeries Lafayette.

The goal is that the exhibition “brings together a vast collection of unpublished works, produced for the most part on site in the Foundation's workshops, around themes that have always animated the artist; the passage of time; disappearance; chance; mystery; aura.”

Across Paris, the fashion house’s new store is developed by Dutch architect Studio Anne Holtrop, who introduced in the gypsum-cast set at the Autumn/Winter 2018 show of Artisanal, the house’s couture line.

In keeping with the ideas of deconstruction at the heart of Galliano’s designs, the surface of the plaster walls are handcrafted individually; while familiar shapes skew, lean and fold, playing on ideas of dressing in haste native to Maison Margiela’s vocabulary.

Finished in their natural shade of plaster, the structures reflect the mat white finish so often associated with Margiela and the founder’s signature cracked white-painted boots.

Composed in a blend of stained travertine shelves, display tables and seats carved; epoxy resin in optical white details; dark-green high gloss fitting rooms and Japanese lacquer cabinets, the 250-square-meter store opened on Saturday, rubbing shoulders with the likes of Dior, Chanel and Armani.

The store is one of four openings featuring the new concept that include Bruton Street in London this summer; Osaka in November and Shanghai’s Réel Mall this coming weekend. Underlying the goal of the brand’s owner Renzo Rosso to rapidly grow its own retail business, this quarter brings to 22 the number of freestanding Maison Margiela boutiques worldwide.