The history of fashion is marked by many encounters between designers who crossed paths and had a profound influence on each other across the ages.
Among them, the most unique is the quiet and fundamental interaction between Jean Paul Gaultier and Martin Margiela , two "complete opposites."
One of them is the "bad boy of the fashion world" who was excessive, provocative, and a symbol of humor and eroticism that lit up Paris in the 1980s.
The other is a "most silent innovator" who maintained his anonymity and continued to present the "beauty of the invisible" through the deconstruction and reconstruction of structures.
In this article, I would like to reexamine how Gaultier and Margiela changed the way we "talk" about fashion, by tracing the connections between the two men and their shared ideas, and reaffirm that fashion is more than just the design of clothes.
The meeting of the two men - The seeds of "anti-fashion" were born in Gaultier's atelier
In 1984, a young Martin Margiela, fresh from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp, Brussels, knocked on the door of Jean-Paul Gaultier's atelier.
Gaultier immediately hired the unknown Belgian as his assistant, marking the beginning of a four-year relationship between them.
What Gaultier was working on during this period was what could be called an expansion of "high-class kitsch." He turned corsets into dresses, exposed lingerie, and brought sailor shirts and punk designs into Paris couture. He used all sorts of "forbidden techniques" to hedonistically destroy established values.
While Margiela was heavily influenced by Gaultier's "sensibility to laugh at the status quo," he attempted to cut into the structure of fashion from a completely different angle. Whereas Gaultier disrupted the rules with his aesthetic of "excess," Margiela sought to reexamine the meaning of the rules themselves with his aesthetic of "reduction."
Margiela's independence and the birth of "deconstruction" - an idea that exposes the "underside" of fashion
In 1988, Martin Margiela founded his own fashion house, Maison Martin Margiela (now Maison Margiela), and made a stunning debut at the Paris Collection the following year, in Spring/Summer 1989.
What he presented was not the "surface" of fashion, but the "structure" itself. He showed the lining on the outside, left traces of sewing intact, and blatantly exposed the stitching and cutting. He deliberately foregrounded the "process" of how clothes are constructed rather than the beauty of the finished product.
Also, the numbered white tags, the models with their faces hidden, the handwritten notes on the invitations - this complete anonymity was a sign of a strong determination that fashion should not be about products or brands, but about communicating ideas.
This philosophy eventually came to be known as the concept of "deconstruction," and was passed on to the Antwerp School of the 1990s and later to Vetements and Balenciaga.
"Who owns fashion?" - The question posed by the two
Jean-Paul Gaultier and Martin Margiela, these two contrasting figures, share a central question.
The question is, "Who owns fashion?"
Gaultier responded to this question with expressions that transcended fixed boundaries such as gender, age, and race. In his 1985 "Bisexual" collection, he had male models wear skirts, thoroughly deconstructing gender symbols.
The show also featured plus-size models, seniors, and drag queens, keeping the theme of "diversity in beauty" in mind.
Meanwhile, Margiela blurred the boundaries between the "maker" and the "wearer" in fashion through the methods of "anonymity" and "visibility of structure." He never appeared on the runway, and even his brand "refused to bear the name of a designer." This was embodied in his anti-consumerist philosophy, which placed more importance on "what is expressed" than "who made it."
Influence on future generations: Questions and humor passed down The lineage of deconstruction continues from Margiela
Margiela's ideas have fundamentally changed fashion since the 2000s.
From Marc Jacobs and Raf Simons to Vetements' Demna Gvasalia (now at Gucci), the attitude of exposing structure, valuing anonymity, and questioning the form of fashion itself has now permeated the core of luxury brands.
Also symbolic was the return of John Galliano, who grew up in Margiela's atelier, as the house's artistic director in 2014. Galliano has fused a theatrical aesthetic with Margiela's "aesthetics of reconstruction," creating a new generation of "anonymous romanticism."
The spirit of "play" left behind by Gaultier
Meanwhile, although Gaultier retired from his role as show designer after the 2020 Spring/Summer Haute Couture collection, he has appointed a succession of young designers to succeed him. In particular, his 2022 Fall/Winter collection, featuring Glenn Martins (Y/Project, Diesel), was highly praised as an example of the ultimate spirit of "reconstruction x play" (see BoF, Dazed).
The fusion of Gaultier's humor and politics, and Margiela's structure and silence, has undoubtedly transformed fashion into something more polyphonic and critical.
Conclusion – Designers who chose not to speak in order to break boundaries
The relationship between Margiela and Gaultier is not simply a story of master and disciple.
It is a duet between a designer who chooses to "speak" fashion and a designer who speaks by "not speaking."
As a result of each of them asking the question "what is fashion" in their own different ways, we now have fashion that is more diverse, more critical, and more free.
Anonymity and excess, construction and play, silence and laughter... the tension between these polar opposites continues to stir our sensibilities even today.
And even if Margiela never appears again, and Gaultier passes the "stage" to his successors, his spirit still pulsates on runways around the world, in the seams of deconstructed clothes and the irony hidden in laughter.
