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[crowd chattering indistinctly]
[crowd shushing]
[cheers and applause]
-[Carla] It was a real change in fashion.
Actually, I think Margiela has been the last revolution we had
in fashion.
[cheers and applause]
-[Pierre] It was way ahead of his time.
The show, the format the clothes,
the-- the ideas behind it.
So, yeah, I mean, he's-- he's definitely one of the most
influential designers of the last like 30 years without a
question.
[cheers and applause]
-[Lidewij] It never tried to please.
But it was pleasing because of that.
-Yeah, he's in the top 10.
Back to the end of the 19th century for sure.
-[Lidewij] Yes, that was very smart,
not to want to be seen.
I think it came from the heart so I don't think it was
a strategy.
-[Sandrine] It brought up a huge mystery.
At the beginning I thought, "He's not going to continue.
He's gonna-- he's making it but at one point he's going to say,
'Okay, here I am.'"
And he never did.
[cheers and applause]
-[Martin] I don't like the idea of being a celebrity.
Anonymity's very important to me.
And it balances me that I am like everybody else.
I always wanted to-- to have my name linked to the product I
created, not to the face I have.
-[Lidewij] The 80s was a crazy period of excess and fun.
Very frivolous fashion.
Big shapes and very hourglass shapes.
Thierry Mugler, Montana and so on.
Fashion shows were events with 60,
75 minutes.
And it was crazy.
And then we drifted into the early 90s.
And that became a period of much more of reflection.
First time we really thought about ecology as a real problem,
a real economic crisis.
People suddenly wanted to have honesty.
People we wearing non-dyed garments, whites, ecrus and so--
so it became a period which was appropriate for his philosophy.
-[Martin] My first theme was a surrealistic eye in the ateliers
of couture.
So it was a spring/summer collection and the inspiration
was the surrealists, of course.
There was this veiled face.
My love for historical fashion and accessories brought me to an
accessory which is called "the jabot."
I wanted shoulder pads because fashion then was very wide.
So that was my first idea of having tiny shoulder pads put
more to the neck that the natural shoulder would pop out
the sides.
And that became my first jacket.
And I did not want short.
Everything was short then.
So I made an ankle-length skirt with a huge split in the back
which I would do, like, I think, five seasons later on.
For me, in the silhouette, the two most important details are
the shoulder and the shoe.
Everything in between, I fill up.
I think the shoulder gives you a certain attitude.
And the shoes, of course, give you a certain movement.
And when a certain silhouette moves in a certain way,
I'm very happy.
You can imagine the stress when you want to create a shoe as
never seen before.
You go a little bit crazy.
Then my memory went back to the day we went to Tokyo for the
first time when we have seen street workers in their flat
cotton tabi shoes.
I thought, "Okay, why shouldn't I do like a soft tabi shoe,
but on a high heel?"
And then the idea was born.
-[Martin] Everything we had before we admired, it was gone.
It was past.
Future was this.
The looks of the showroom, the shops.
They had catalogues we never have seen before.
The models were made up in a certain way.
And it went so far that there was even a way of walking.
And that, I think, is very strong.
I met Jenny in one of her amazing shops in Brussels and we
very soon became friends because there was really an
understanding of aesthetics.
And, of course, we both had that craze for the Japanese
designers, which was very intense.
And we were ready to go on the adventure together.
To present the extreme fashion I had in mind, I thought that it
was very important to show it in a kind of universe.
It had to be constructed around the collar.
In the late 80s, most of the showrooms and shops would be in
gray concrete with black design furniture.
And I started thinking how to be different.
So, I came up with a different color and the color would be
white.
Since there was no budget at our start,
I would find junk furniture in the street or at Salvation Army.
When it had an interesting design, it would be painted.
Otherwise, it was covered in white cotton.
-You know, they said, "We're going to paint everything
white," and I was like, "Yeah, that seems like a good idea
because it needs a little refresh."
And then, you know, you come in and then when they say,
"We're going to paint everything white,"
they painted everything white:
the phones, the TVs, the desks, the walls, the-- everything was
painted white and covered in white cotton, you know?
And that was the way they did it.
And you looked and like, "Oh my god,
it looks so good!"
You didn't know what was underneath.
It was just painted white and was beautiful.
-[Martin] The white blouse which became the Margiela uniform came
just by seeing all these pictures and images of models
wearing the white blouses in high fashion houses.
We came out of a period when people would enter a shop and
look to the labels.
They would grab the garment and say,
[gasps] "This is him or her."
I thought, "Ugh, I really don't like that idea."
And yeah, there we went.
It took years before this blank label with four stitches was
named Maison Martin Margiela.
-For many years, all of us that were wearing something from
Martin, we had very often someone coming in you back and
scratching your back and saying, "You have something."
And saying, "Oh, no, it's normal.
It's the stitch of Ma-- it's the stitch of the label.
It's Martin Margiela."
And nobody knew and then it became something that you could
recognize.
The one that had the four stitches,
that was cool.
But at the beginning it really was something,
you know, that people wanted to take away.
-[Martin] I always wanted to do a show in a theater.
It's called Cafe de la Guerre.
And by then, it was still very 70s.
We spoke with the guy and he said,
"Oh, fashion, why not?"
I said, "Yes, it's our very first show," and he said,
"Oh, then I can tell you something.
If it works out, you will become famous."
I said, "How come?"
He said, "Oh, we had very famous people starting here like
Gerard Depardieu and Miu MIu."
And we said, "Okay, then."
[laughs]
"Let's do it."
[applause]
When I first tried a veil on a model wearing an outfit,
something happened to me.
With no face there was only the garment and the movement of the
garment.
And I loved that.
When you work so long to achieve something, you want people
to see it.
So, I came up with that idea of having the girls walking in red
paint before they left the backstage.
But that was me with my obsession.
[cheers and applause]
-[Stella] It was just totally mind-blowing.
Just the way the models, you know,
came out with the masks and just the whole silhouette and the
shoes.
It was-- I had never seen anything like that.
I don't like the word "avant-garde" so much,
but it had such an edge, uh, that I didn't feel at all in
fashion.
I think it's like when Andy Warhol came out, right?
He was like, boom.
He just broke, shattered the art world in many ways.
-[Pierre] Everybody was beginning to talk a lot about
Martin Margiela.
There was something very powerful about what he did and
very different also from everything else that was going
on.
There was something very compelling about what he was
doing.
I can't explain why.
I was very young.
I didn't know much about fashion.
But there was something very, very attractive about it.
We were looking for a place for a photoshoot for I believe at
the time it was ID Magazine.
And to do a special on Martin Margiela's clothes,
whatever.
So, I took Jenny and Martin there.
You know, they were walking around looking at it and then
they said, "I think we're going to do the show here."
And I was like, "A show here?" [laughs]
Because at the time you were doing a show Cour Carrée de
Louvre or, you know, or like within a five block radius of
Cour Carrée de Louvre.
You were not doing shows in the dix-neuvieme
or vigntieme or where ever it was.
Um...
and it was an open air space.
You know, it was like open air.
It was like a-- a-- what you call that?
Un terrain vague, you know, with a kids' playground.
It was a really beautiful show.
We were so overwhelmed by it.
People were coming with the cars and the limos,
you know, not knowing where they were going.
A little scared because nobody was like going into this area in
Paris at the time.
And the focus for Martin generally was very much that the
kids had to be there, the families,
the neighborhood had to be there.
So, it was already quite crowded with all the neighborhood.
-[Martin] Every girl was dressed mostly with very light and
mostly white items.
For the first time, also, oversized.
These oversized tank tops which were creased under net
t-shirts, people called it "the new wet look,"
which was right.
When the clothes arrived, I thought it was so exciting to
see them out of the plastic that I say,
"Hey, some garments we leave with the plastic cover."
The audience was very strange.
One half was, I would say, the professionals was there with
open mouth.
And then all the others were yelling and clapping and singing
and it became one big experience.
But very, very touching.
[cheers and applause]
It's the most magical show, I think,
of my whole career.
-[Pierre] The show was very controversial.
I mean, there were like very violent reactions to it saying
it was like the utilization of young,
disenfranchised children used as props and,
you know, all of that stuff.
Which was, you know, very very violently criticized by some--
some media.
It was very shocking, you know, to see that some people had
received a very different message from it.
I think sometimes the abrupt nature of this business and the
abrupt nature of how people reacted to what you do I think
was probably quite hurtful to him at times.
And I think that's part of why, at some point very early on,
he decided he was not going to subject himself personally to it
and-- and said, "I'm not doing interviews.
I'm not doing pictures.
I'm not doing all this stuff."
Because I think it was-- you're really anti his-- contrary to
his nature.
-[Martin] Anonymity for me was a kind of protection of my person.
As a designer, but also as a person.
That I could work and the work was hard and that I had nothing
on my schedule like all the appointments one can have with
press.
I'm not against those appointments,
but I could not cope with them.
They would bring me out of my balance.
Sometimes, I regret that I had to take this decision to save
myself.
So, I knew I could give more if I felt protected.
Your collections need to be very strong because it's difficult to
make a name if they could not put a face on it.
-The first time I saw his collection was at the
Salvation Army in Paris.
And, um, and as I said I was sitting on a washing machine.
And everybody was in a really good mood because they were
sitting on different things-- it was in a furniture store.
And I think I was sort of probably grinning and thinking,
"This is like really crazy."
And not really understanding it.
And it took a little bit of time to understand it.
There was a kind of-- maybe not a challenge,
in a way.
You sort of thought, "Well what-- why can't we see him?"
And-- but then after a while you sort of accept it because the
story he was telling, the shows and the collections were so
powerful that you put that aside.
Could you imagine having to explain all that?
It would be really brutal.
He would be destroyed at the end of the day.
And have to talk and then have some stupid journalist say,
"Well, I didn't understand.
Why did they have hair in their faces?
Did you-- are you talking that you're-- are you anti-women?"
And that happens.
The dumbest questions get asked.
So, yeah.
So, he did us a favor in a way. [laughs]
He made us think more, you know?
He made us be more creative in how we thought about things.
-[Martin] My father was a hairdresser.
And I loved as a little kid hanging around and see what
happened and all the gestures was very interesting to see.
When the hair was falling on the floor and then the other clients
would come in walking through the hair and I was always
impressed seeing what happened with hair.
So I have these memories that my mom said to my father,
"What do you think?
Let's be a little more up-to-date."
Then the wigs came into the barber shop.
She had a little corner.
At first my dad said, "No, no, no,
I don't want wigs here with all the men.
No, try to sell them after closing time."
I thought that was very extravagant, you know?
Like, a night shop with wigs? [laughs]
-[Martin] At the age of seven, I remember seeing on television
a Paris fashion show.
So, I asked my mom, "What is this?"
She would say, "That's just a fashion designer in Paris."
So I thought, "Okay, fashion designer in Paris.
That's what I want to be."
And then I saw these amazing boots under a summer dress.
I always knew that boots were for wintertime.
So having boots under a summer dress and then with these
cut-off toes, I thought, "Wow, this is really incredible."
So, immediately after I would go to my Barbies and cut off the
toes of their boots.
I think the most important person in my life was my
grandmother.
She was a dressmaker.
She would make dresses for her own.
I would sit there for hours and look how she cut patterns,
fabric.
So I was fascinated by this woman who would answer all my
questions with right answers, wrong answers.
She was quite extravagant in her way.
One day seeing her like this with this huge brown hairdo.
And the next day I would come home form school and she would
stand there but completely blond.
I was a quite lonely kid and I would love to isolate myself and
think in my own dream world of fashion,
of course,
with all the little rests of the remaining fabrics of my
grandmother.
Then, my parents' friends would come and visit them and,
of course, the classical question was,
"And you, when you are big, what do you want to become?"
Even if I was a very shy child, I would say,
"A fashion designer in Paris."
They would make a strange face.
My parents were embarrassed, and so they said,
"Please stop telling these things."
I did because I obey, but in my heart I felt that it was the
truth.
I remember seeing in one of her fashion magazines a picture of
this dress by Pierre Cardin of '66 and I loved the dress so
much that I asked my grandmother if she could make one like this
for my doll.
I got wigs which I dyed with vinegar into a matching hair
color and I thought it looked fantastic.
And then I fell in love with Bridgette Bardot.
I thought she represented the French nonchalant stylish woman.
Completely free.
Yeah.
Being yourself in that way is gorgeous.
So, this was [foreign language].
Yeah, I wanted to sell then.
I needed money and I made the price okay,
but I didn't sell.
Later in the 70s, I made my first garment on my own.
It was a gray flannel blazer I had seen off Yves Saint Laurent.
I think she looks already like a Margiela model.
-The woman that he was addressing was a woman who had
humor, who was free, who was not counting on her sexual--
sex appeal to exist.
Probably a working woman, because it was convenient
clothes also.
So, all this for me is the portrait of an intelligent
woman.
And I like it.
I like that this person has this vision of woman in a world where
fashion is so often linked to a certain sexual vision of woman,
which I find, personally, sometimes pretty to look at
but very boring.
-It's almost like a social movement that was a reflect--
reflecting what was going on in the street,
in the mind of the women that didn't want to be objects
but real people.
It's much deeper, much much deeper than clothes.
-[Kristina] This was my first show for Martin.
-[woman] Wow.
-There was one picture and they asked me to make it myself,
and everyone-- well, everyone-- four of them-- a few of them
were standing around me and I was too shy.
So, they left the room and they gave me a special thing to make
the picture myself. [laughs]
-Really?
-Yes.
Yeah.
-Personally, we didn't speak so much with him so,
uh--
-But I think that's why also it made it so special to work,
uh, for Martin.
And to be able to see him.
To know how he looks like and everything.
Because it was such a mystery for everybody.
-Yeah, he-- he's-- he is and was and is a mystery.
- Yeah.
-I like his hands.
The way he-- he-- he-- you know.
-When he put it--
-When he dresses you and also backstage before you--
-[woman] Yeah.
-The way you-- he dresses you in the last-- you know?
It's with finesse, you know?
-[woman] Yeah.
-He knows he knows exactly what to do.
-It was nothing rough about it, you know?
Some people they don't-- they have this roughness,
you know?
And they wanna--
-Yeah, sometimes you don't want to be touched by a certain
person.
-I could see that he sees that I am a person,
and not just, uh, you know, something to wear the clothes.
-[Martin] I thought it would be very nice to have a certain kind
of feel in heavy makeup and messy hair.
I love messy hair.
But on very natural-looking woman.
So we did what they called "street casting."
And they would say, "How do we have to walk?"
I said, "The way you came in.
It's perfect."
Parking lot was very strong.
Because I said, "No, we go farther."
So, there was no carpet.
Seating we never did anyway.
First come, first serve, which was really daring.
When the first models would come out,
I had them all heavily perfumed with pachouli so they would come
into that very neutral space and perfume the whole parking lot.
And then I said to the models, "Laugh.
Smile.
Look at the audience."
What no models did.
So the models said, "Are you crazy?"
I said, "No, please, please, please."
They did and they were so happy coming backstage.
They said, "Martin it worked!
It worked!
People are reacting."
[cheers and applause]
The audience was like at a rock concert and it reminded me at
the first Gaultier shows I saw.
[cheers and applause]
When I was a fashion student in the academy,
we all wanted to see, of course, the Jean Paul Gaultier show.
He was really the idol of the younger generation.
It was really, really new.
[cheers and applause]
During the show, people were yelling.
They were clapping.
They were giving reaction like in a rock concert.
That was an atmosphere I could never forget.
[cheers and applause]
We had no invitations.
And then we would fake them.
We did copies of the paper.
We would go with the badge into the supermarket,
looking on all the yogurt pots which is the right size.
Then we found it.
Well, it's slightly bigger.
And there we go.
And the whole class had these badges.
It was washing away a habit, a period of fashion.
-Um, it's an academy for fine arts.
So, they have different departments: sculpture,
painting and also fashion.
And, um, this is the place where the Antwerp Six and,
of course, also Martin studied and graduated,
had their graduation shows.
And, um, I think, yeah, this is the-- the-- the-- still today,
the beating heart of the Antwerp fashion story.
He was in a class together with Walter Van Beirendonck.
And the other of the Antwerp Six graduated a year later.
From very early on, they became a very tight group of friends.
They partied together, they worked together,
um, like students do.
And I think there was a kind of gentle competition that was
important because it also pushed them to be better and better.
To develop a vision.
To develop a concept and to translate that in a fashion
collection, um, that's what they learned here.
-[Martin] The academy learned me something I would use for the
rest of my career.
They gave us every week a lesson in costume history.
We choose one image of the period of the week.
And we had to let it inspire us to create a today-- well,
of that day, silhouette.
Another task was to construct a garment out of existing kitchen
materials.
I choose tea towels to construct a jacket.
And I did not want to cut a pattern.
So, I tried to use the full tea towels,
just fold it and patch together.
I did not know then that this would lead to what I did so many
years later, the sock sweater, by assembling different military
socks into a sweater.
-[Stella] Here, I brought some of the oldest,
rarest and my favorite Martin pieces.
And this one...
I still wear it.
Uh, I didn't take the tag off.
This is 1991.
Spring/summer.
And it's a-- it's another artisanal piece that, um...
It's an evening dress. [laughs]
Yeah, like this is-- I mean, look how beautiful that is.
It's, yeah, this is-- this is one of my favorite.
This is done, you know, in the same-- the same idea as-- as
these pieces.
Yeah.
And the coolest thing with Martin's sensitivity is that
none of this is made from really precious fabric.
These are really vintage garments that he found in
areas of Paris.
They are not vintage garments that were-- that came from the
homes of, you know, very bourgeoise people.
They probably came from very regular people.
-[Martin] Since my first collections, I felt that it
would be more interesting to mix second-hand clothes with
my new designs.
I knew I could not just do a shopping on the flea market and
then sell them and mix them with my collection but by
deconstructing them and create new ideas with them,
it would work.
After trying a lot, I think in '91 it really became convincing
with the cut-open evening dresses.
So very quickly, every season there would be strong ideas on
second-hand clothes.
And it became quite quickly aligned on itself.
The staff found a lot of silk and rayon and polyester scarves.
All heavily printed.
Very colorful.
Something I would never touch.
But I knew that sometimes what you really don't like can become
very exciting.
These were all theater costumes and we left them damaged like
they were.
So they were all different one-of-a-kind.
And all were quite destroyed.
This was a waistcoat, you see?
And the sleeves are just attached in the front.
And we left them open in the back.
So you see it's sleeves from another garment.
When I started, I thought, "I'm really uncomfortable talking to
people and doing my job."
It's not that I did not want contact with press,
but I did not want always to comment my collections.
I thought they could see them and take them for what
they were.
So, we had to create something new in our business,
which was very difficult.
And they thought I did not want to see them.
That I wanted to become a mystery,
which is not.
I think I will be the only designer who could achieve it.
Because it grew very naturally and it was honest.
I was not made to cope with that system as well as Jean Paul
Gaultier does it.
He can talk in front of them.
He can handle it.
In a very positive way of the word, he is a real entertainer.
And honestly, Jean Paul always said,
"Martin, you are too serious."
And it's true, I am probably too serious for that world.
This was how the designer studio looked like.
I loved the atmosphere because it was something I never ever
had seen before.
He said always, "Oh, you're so organized.
You're so organized."
And I start putting things in boxes.
I start making files.
And he was very happy with this.
He had a freedom that I learned at his place.
And that freedom was: do with what you have.
And what you don't have, you fake it or you make it.
But do it.
This freedom was something I struggled with all the time,
but not in the right way.
Now, I could see that in Paris, you could be as free
as you wanted.
And then he said, "You don't realize,
Martin, that you have a style, a taste and you should stick with
that taste for your future."
And it's strange but I did not know.
I knew I had a taste -- quiet directions --
but I did not know that that was becoming a style.
-[Lidewij] I think the deconstruction really started
with [inaudible].
Uh, more early in the 80s.
But, uh, her's was really out of a violence against
then-current society.
And his deconstruction, I see it more as a real study of what
makes a garment.
How does it function?
So I see it as a-- as a dissection of a doctor who's
looking inside a body.
So, he's really trying to find all the essence and all the
inner workings of a system of making.
And then he recreates with it.
So it's part of a positive attitude towards the garment.
-[woman] In Martin's work, I've always seen something that did
not take itself seriously.
Even though I know how serious he is about his work and how
precise and how demanding he is, it's really as if he was
observing the world and thinking, "How can I play
with it?"
-[Martin] We had now 10 seasons of one style, which people
started calling a "Margiela style."
We could feel that we were, after all these years,
influential.
So fashion started to change into my direction.
So, before we were struggling that people could not understand
us.
But now, I was suffering that people understood too well.
And I could see that fashion became long.
Fashion became ankle-length and narrow,
with destroyed details.
I felt very strange.
I got depressed.
The whole time, it was about copies,
copies, copies.
And I said, "Yeah, well, okay, well,
what can I do?"
And then press started giving reactions like,
"Young people should know he was first."
And then I thought, "Hey, why then I don't do it again?"
And I came up with the idea of, since there were 10 collections,
let's make the best of the 10 collections.
-[Martin] I thought, "But then, people will say,
'Yeah, but we have seen that and we have seen this,'" and I said,
"Okay, they want originals?
We will stamp on every garment's label the original date
of the design."
I thought it was a concept.
I found that the word "concept" was something new.
I played a lot before.
I discovered the kind of woman I liked to dress.
So, concept was something much more focused on the garment
itself.
So the idea was to take clothes off Barbie and Ken and blow them
up to life-size.
People would say, "It doesn't fit properly."
And that's what I liked.
It looked like a doll's garment on a living person.
The idea was make a selection of vintage clothes like a little--
a little wardrobe, I can call it.
And all these garment would be photographed flat in a black and
white picture.
So then, these pictures were printed on fabric.
At the end, it became a highly conceptual result.
[cheers and applause]
I though it would be nice to work on a collection completely
based on an haute couture atelier.
I did some-- yeah, not very important studies.
I was not really pleased because at the end it just looked like
old fashion, old couture drapery.
So, going back then to my studies I thought,
"Yeah, that's it.
We have to sell the studies."
[cheers and applause]
-[Cathy] He's in the books.
He's in the history.
And only a fraction of designers get into the history.
But, the downside is he's not, um,
you know, there was, I think, a financial struggle for him and
for the people who worked with him too.
And they see other people living well.
It's hard.
It's-- you know, it's okay when you're in your 20s to be poor
and struggling.
But when you get to be in your 30s and then in your 40s,
you want to have a comfortable life.
Not a rich life, but a comfortable life.
-[Martin] I did, during my whole career, a lot of consultations,
which mean doing collections for different houses.
At a certain moment, there came a request from a very important
French house, which is Hermes.
And when I heard it, I thought immediately,
"Yeah."
It seemed so natural, even if it was the biggest contrast you can
imagine.
Maison Martin Margiela and then Hermes on the other side.
-Still, the image he had was of insolence towards fashion,
of something new, of something shocking that was never scared
of daring.
And Hermes, obviously, had not that image.
And, uh, the wedding between these two was,
uh-- made people very curious of where could that go.
On the reputation point of view, that Hermes had asked to Martin
was a very, very good thing for Hermes.
Prob-- because it was unexpected.
When Martin met my father-- I think my father was
irresistible.
That's normal.
It was my father.
But they liked each other very fast and they found their way of
communicating that really belonged to both of them.
But Martin, he really went to the essence of Hermes
and from this, brought out a woman that had these-- this very
elegant way of dressing in a very classical way.
And he really-- he managed to create something that seemed so
obvious.
As if it had always been there.
-[VO] [foreign language].
-[Martin] For me, luxury is the perfect balance between quality
and comfort.
And if I can go farther, I would say add timelessness.
-[VO] [foreign language].
-[Martin] I thought that these very pure and simple looks and
garments didn't need color.
I preferred material, shape and finishing.
So, there were colors swept away from the vocabulary.
And we talked only about tones.
-[VO] [foreign language].
-He was really the first one to create that kind of woman.
But it seemed like, you know, sometimes you meet someone and
you think, "Oh, we've known each other forever."
Well, it was the same thing.
When Martin came in Hermes, it's like,
"Oh, we've known each other forever."
-[Martin] Then I had to present this new collection for
the first time.
And I said, "Oh, no, no, no, no, I don't want to go out.
This is a collection which we have to show inside the house.
I want to do a salon show in the shop."
-[Cathy] I remember sitting next to Amy Spindler.
She was enraged that these plain clothes were coming out.
She was like, "Hermes has all these things that it could be
doing and all these symbols and the scarf prints and the horse
thing."
And Amy was not a conventional person.
She was not bourgeoise, but she just could not-- and I was the
same.
I was like thinking, "Ah, so chic looking,
but, ah, you know, it's so repetitive and it's so simple
and...
why not do a little bit more?"
We weren't thinking that the most luxurious thing was a
leather coat cut super soft and that went down to the floor.
We just didn't get that.
-[Martin] All the reactions said that it was really annoying and
they thought, "Huh?
Is that why they hired Martin Margiela?"
They were really shocked in a certain way by the simplicity,
which they called "bore."
I just started something which would go on for a long time.
It was a huge change.
So they needed certain seasons to instill that new style.
I was really, really happy there.
I didn't think the end was coming after six years already,
which is 12 collections.
But I had to stop simply because my house was demanding more and
more.
-[VO] [foreign language].
-[Martin] Jenny and me, we felt that we were growing very fast
and we needed more facilities to develop more lines,
which means more assistants, which means more money.
By coincidence, it was the same moment that our manufacturer's
place was taken over by Renzo Rosso from Diesel company.
So Jenny told him that we were thinking to search an investor
and he made a very convincing business plan.
And the decision was taken.
So he took over the biggest part of the company shares.
We did not want a big luxury group but somebody who could
understand us, who started from scratch as we did.
Jenny was less and less motivated because she was having
no time anymore for her own creative input.
So, she decided herself to leave when Renzo came in.
For men, I thought it was nicer to use only guys who were not
models.
And it was just about the interesting look of each guy.
Not about his fashionable looks.
I decided not to do what we call a "fashion collection."
But I would call it a wardrobe.
It's like opening the cupboard of a guy who likes to dress,
and you will see that he will have different shapes of
jackets, trousers, shoes and whatever.
And that's what I wanted to achieve.
Sometimes I say, "Okay, I do it for myself."
But, I would also put garments in it which I would dream to
wear because I was already reduced to a certain uniform,
which was t-shirt, jeans jacket, jeans and a cap.
I would never put myself in a suit, so I would think that it
was quite exciting to have some guys in a suit,
but guys who would never, ever wear a suit because they
were obliged.
Just for the fun of it.
This is a show that has been done at Palais de Chaillot
on stairs only.
And people-- see, we build up little blocks for the chairs to
be in between one stair and the other.
And the models, they were coming up and down and up and down.
Believe me, it's not easy to have girls coming down the
stairs with heels and with black glasses.
Why make it simple when you can make it complicated?
In French, we say, "C'est une evidence."
And really, many times, I was looking at the clothes
and I say, "Mais, c'est une evidence."
Only that nobody ever thought of it before.
Or nobody dared to do it.
Some of the clothes were made, but the rest of the roll of
fabric was still attached to the clothes.
I mean...
when you see this and you just can-- only can say,
"It's brilliant."
Some girls, they were wearing jewelry that was made of ice.
They were basically melting on the body of the girls and it's
changing the color of the clothes while the girls is
on-stage.
I have no words.
[cheers and applause]
-[Martin] In 2006, there came this big surprise of the Chambre
Syndicale de la Haute Couture of Paris.
Monsieur [inaudible] invited me to show in the
Haute Couture Week
and bring up the artisanal collection to a haute couture
collection.
It came as a huge recognition.
You cannot say anything better than,
"Wow."
[pop]
I felt for the first time that what I was doing was quite
becoming tired
because there was always a system I used,
which I knew the best.
So I wanted to be different, new,
without rejecting my fans.
I thought it was good to stop a little bit with the washing,
creasing, and unfinished look.
And I took everything which could become design.
Something new in the vocabulary of the house.
And then there was this white, impeccable women's suit.
Something very new for me.
And I thought, "Oh my god, this is not Margiela."
And I took the iron and put a brand mark in the back of the
skirt.
So I thought, "Now, it's Margiela."
The first customers we lost during the years,
they all came back with a collection which was so
different than the ones before.
It felt like a new beginning.
-When somebody buys a brand, when a company like Diesel comes
in and Renzo buys it, you think,
"Oh, this is good.
This will give him some capital."
And then you think, "This is a bad match.
This is not going to work out very well."
-[Martin] Even if, with the new direction, there was a lot of
new and fresh energy,
there was something very unpleasant going on for quite a
while in the fashion system.
For me, it started when we had to go on the internet the same
day as the show was shown.
I like the energy which comes with a surprise.
And this energy was completely lost.
Everything was immediately pushed out on the internet.
Yeah, I felt a little bit lost.
So I fell more and more sad in a certain way.
And I felt like, "Okay, this is the start of a moment where
there are different needs in the fashion world and I'm not sure I
can feed them."
-[Martin] At the end, I became, in a certain way, an artistic
director in my own company.
And that bothered me.
Because I'm a designer.
I'm really a fashion designer.
And a fashion designer who creates.
And I'm not just a creative director who directs his
assistants.
2009 is 20 years after our beginning.
So, the idea was that I would use my old themes as new
inspiration, but translated in a much more artistic way.
[cheers and applause]
I still regret that I had to leave the night of the last show
without telling anybody because the new owner wanted to avoid a
huge shock.
But I never could say goodbye to my team.
And that is, in a certain way, very painful.
Because I appreciate a lot of these people.
They gave really everything they could.
And, um, yeah.
It's not my way of saying goodbye.
-I think Martin was doing exactly what he wanted.
That's why probably he left:
to keep intact his choices and his point of view.
And, um...
which is very understandable.
You know, if-- if you-- you need the freedom if you have
something to say.
-He's not scared of taking strong decisions because leaving
Hermes must have been a difficult choice for him too.
And he did it.
And then leaving the fashion world,
um...
is unique.
-I think that he's, you know-- he's very fortunate that he said
what he said and then he moved on.
-[Martin] It seems strange but it's a very tough job.
And I made it probably more complicated than it was.
I pushed myself constantly into extremes because I really loved
discovering and pushing myself farther.
I was very, very hard with myself.
Today, I paint.
I do sculpture.
I do a lot of creative expression and I love it.
I love to be by myself.
Not having anybody around me.
Just me and myself doing my things.
And when I want to do those things,
there are no seasons anymore.
I was immensely pleased.
Because it's the biggest recognition you can have.
Because in fashion everything goes quick.
And you are very quickly famous and very quickly forgotten.
10 years later in fashion means 20 seasons.
I was not searching this and I was not expecting this.
But it's a very pleasant surprise. [laughs]
-This is the moment of Margiela,
so if it is 30 years ago and we can presume that the next 20
years will be the Margiela moment,
then we have half a century of influence that's...
that's major.
That's major.
-He created a vocabulary.
A language.
And it's not attached to him personally,
you know, as a-- as a face or as a...
It's attached to what he created,
you know?
And I think in that sense he probably-- I don't know.
I haven't talked to him about it.
But if that's what he wanted to do he's certainly succeeding.
-[man] Do you think you have told everything you wanted to
tell in fashion?
-[Martin] [sighs]
No.