Fashion Designer Biographies- Martin Margiela History Essay

Martin Margiela.
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Early Life.
Martin Margiela was born on April 9, 1957 in Genk, Belgium. He is a Belgian fashion designer and the founder of the French Fashion House, Maison Margiela. Margiela started showing his interest in the field of fashion design ever since he was a young boy and in a rare 1983 interview with Sphere, he talked about his experience in the fashion world stating that “I was watching the TV news and there was an item about (Paco) Rabanne and (André) Courrèges. As soon as I saw their designs I thought, ‘how wonderful, people are doing the sort of thing I want to do’.” (Best & Burns, 2013). He attended and graduated from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp in 1979 and to date, Margiela is known to be a respected and honorary member of the “Antwerp Six”, the renowned group of fashion designers who all attended and graduated from the school in 1980. Other members of the group were Ann Demeulemeester, Dries Van Noten among others who are still credited for bringing a wave of design and pushing the fashion industry through innovations and reforms in New York, Paris and Milan, setting the pace for today’s fashion marketplace (Best & Burns, 2013).
Career.
He started his fashion and design work after graduation and when he officially moved to Paris to work as a fashion assistant to Jean Paul Gaultier who nurtured his talent knowing that he was good and skilled but did not know his exact areas and disciplines. In 1988, he founded his eponymous label with the help of his business partner, Jenny Meirens, an idea that provoked a huge reaction from the public since they were very shocked to see the very first collection of silhouettes by Margiela (Best & Burns, 2013). A renowned fashion designer during the time, Bob Verhelst, told Icon that people were surprised by Margiela’s work because they did not really expect him to be that advanced, flexible and adaptive. Owing the credits to his debut designs, he was the first winner of the ANDAM fellowship in 1989. The prestigious award has since then be top fashion designers in the world, Viktor and Rolf, Gareth Pugh, Richard Nicoll and Giles Deacon (Best & Burns, 2013).
During this time, Margiela was always against the fashion and started showing his disinterest and revolt by showcasing his style of oversized and irregular proportions such as long arms dropping below the actual length of the whole garment, thick linings and seam together with hems hanging on the outside. He named this type of style, deconstruction, a notion that Kawakubo greatly acknowledged, and it is an important fact to know in order to understand his overall style of redesigning objects such as silk scarves, wigs and canvases using the hand in to garments (Best & Burns, 2013). Margiela always kept his life personal and life in general very low and secret and after shows, he always remained backstage. He has kept his face away from the world having had only one photo taken by Marcio Madeira of Zepplin Photos in 1997 but he never heeded to its official release. Besides, any interview and media contact done on him has always only been done via fax (Best & Burns, 2013).
In 1997, he made an unexpected move in the industry by the womenswear director of the famous classic design house, Hermes. He states that when he and the chairman of Hermes, Jean-Louis Dumas, first met, he asked him a question regarding how he always does his fashion design where the world already had the perspective of his style that they used the words grunge and destroy to describe it (Best & Burns, 2013). Therefore, in the rare interview, the chairman asked him if he was planning on cutting the Kelly, an expensive but popular dress during the time, and he told him that he was going to make it better and that the personnel in the classic design house would be impressed.
In 1998, Margiela launched his menswear collection, a brand he called 10. He arrived on the name because he adopted a very discreet trademark where he named all his collections with numbers ranging from 0 to 23 in a chronological order White, J. (2001). Therefore, any time he introduced a new brand of clothing, he named it that way so this one from 1998 was his tenth but the first to receive recognition due to his previous achievements. The previous original tags or brands included the black and white label which were hand tacked with four stitches hanging from the cloth and could be seen from the outside. He termed his original designs as symbols of being ‘cool’ for those who were enlightened and conversant about fashion and design White, J. (2001). In 2002, his label, Maison Margiela became a wide world known public company with the most of its shares belonging to the then rich man Renzo Russo, the owner of Diesel Group Company.
In 2003, due to disagreements and the need to expand his label and do something of his own, he voluntarily steeped down from his role in the Hermes house and ironically, his former mentor, Jean Paul Gaultier, took over the position. In 2006, Margiela made it to the headlines by presenting a critically acclaimed and positively received collection of trouser suits that were perfectly made from upholstery fabrics from 1970s and car seatbelts that he used in drawing in silhouettes White, J. (2001). The positive reception was facilitated by the love of his work with unconventional materials like some of his tops that were made from vintage leather gloves, some boots that were cleft-toed and jewelry made from colored as well as some of his clothes that were colored and dyed using melting ice. To this day, his style of presentation and making clothes and full outfits out of absolutely unrelated materials has been greatly appreciated (Best & Burns, 2013). In one show, he challenged the judges, editors and buyers to sit according to their ultimate importance, moving the crowd and in another occurrence, models worn by Martin Margiela rolled on to the stage on trolleys making an outstanding performance for themselves and a name for the fashion designer.
In May 2006, he was invited by the Chambre Syndicale to showcase their first couture collection on the official Paris schedule held as an appreciation of the world’s fashion designers for their true excellence and craftsmanship (Kim, NamKoong & Hwang, 2013). In 2008, a brief visual representation of his 20, the next work of the Maison Margiela was showcased during the opening of the Fashion Museum Province of Antwerp. It was in this occasion that a peek of his face was first printed on the pages of New York Times. Following this was an announcement in 2009 that was made that Martin Margiela had resigned from his position at the Maison as the creative director. There were numerous speculations as reasons for his resignation although insiders stated that he had been absent and not entirely involved in the activities of the company. Another reason was because of alleged differences in the coordination of the company with other creative minds and also the fact that he had told his friends that he was always hoping he would take a step down to his low life profile and stay away from the adamant and demanding world of fashion (Kim, NamKoong & Hwang, 2013). However, the main reason was because there had been disagreements in the ownership of the company since its takeover in 2002 where he felt that he was being driven away from ownership by Diesel, a renowned and popular company. He felt that he was sacrificing a lot to satisfy the mainstream by keeping the Maison’s exclusivity and authenticity for the gain of Diesel.
With Margiela gone, there were questions on who would succeed him in taking his position. Raff Simmons was offered the opportunity but news and journals state that Simmons turned it down forcing the management to proceed to approach Haider Ackermann to take the position as the creative director but the position was also rejected (Kim, NamKoong & Hwang, 2013). Therefore, in December 2009, it was confirmed that there would be no appointment of the successor of Maison Martin Margiela. Meanwhile, there was introduce a new design team and while every com...