Margiela: The Hermès Years

Reprint

Exhibition at MOMu, Antwerp, 31 March - 27 August 2017 ;
then at MAD, Paris, 22 March - 2 September 2018

In 1997, Jean-Louis Dumas, chairman of Hermès, called on Martin Margiela (1957-) to take over as artistic director of the company's ready-to-wear collections. An influential avant-garde designer, the Flemish designer had been Jean Paul Gaultier's assistant from 1984 before founding Maison Martin Margiela in 1988.

Like Hermès, Margiela cultivates a refined approach to clothing, paying the utmost attention to materials, including new and recycled ones; he has a taste for innovation and knows what patience and meticulousness are required in the workshop.

This exhibition catalogue pays tribute, through images, testimony and analysis, to this short but very rich Hermès period, which ended in 2003. It sheds light on the interactions between one of the leading designers of the early years of this century and the famous Parisian house with its ancestral heritage, through twelve daring collections, veritable masterpieces of technicality, clarity and modernity.