BEAUTY: Clothing--Maison Martin Margiela

I know it is poetry month, and I usually dedicate the month to the written word, but I can't wait until May to post a video of this incredible collection Glenn Martens just showed for Maison Martin Margiela (Martens, previously here, was at Y/Project and Diesel but just took over Margiela from John Galliano). Fashion journalist Luke Leitch of Vogue was at this runway show presented in a shipping container yard in Shanghai and describes what he saw perfectly:

"As deeply conceived as it was exquisitely surfaced, this Maison Margiela show under the hand of Glenn Martens was close to being a masterpiece. And I only say ‘close to’ because; a) to insist that a collection built on upending the notion of perfection is near-perfect must be wrong, and b) Martens and the Margiela studio seem to be just getting into their stride: much more is to come.

Tonight, we were in a Shanghai container yard. Like every ‘destination’ show, this first-ever Maison Margiela runway outside of Paris was driven by expansion, in this case to preface a four-city tour of four exhibitions dedicated to decoding some core lore—including the much-misunderstood masks—in China. Unusually, though, tonight the destination’s dislocation served the collection. We were surrounded by towers of containers, red, blue, and green, stamped with the names of their operating companies and clients: I saw a lot of Temu. This critical artery of trade for the planet’s greatest exporter beat sweetly against the thrifted provenance of much of the collection: free market to flea market.

Martens and the studio started this collection, which included ready-to-wear and the Artisnal offering, by returning to the process often observed by Martin Margiela: creative upcycling. The first Margiela exhibition, which opens here tomorrow, includes 58 archival looks variously fashioned from wigs, combs, playing cards, and much more thrifted ephemera. Fall 2026’s thrifting started with a group of 19th century porcelain dolls. As well as sparking the straightforward China association, these translated into an incredible 90 kilo dress fashioned from a shattered mosaic of porcelain; its hem splintered and shrieked as it was worn across the rough cement floor. They further inspired the first three odd-numbered looks in which eight layers or so of glassy organza were printed and painted and layered and draped and molded over skirts to create eye-defyingly immersive visual surfaces. These were worn under masks shrouded just enough to reveal the printed, vacant moue of dollface makeup beneath.

Once the porcelain had cracked out of view we saw a series of evening looks presented as skin-like surfaces, with jersey stretched and bonded over the guts of tailored garments so tightly that you saw the outline of the suiting architecture beneath. This was later returned to in a series of leather looks, jackets, pants, and dresses, in which the constructed edges of the garment were left unfinished like rawhide. Martens and the studio then applied the Margelian Bianchetto treatment to garments including an inwardly draped silk gown, tailcoats and pants, and an argyle overprinted mohair skirt suit. The bodice and arms of a quite amazing Edwardian-referencing school ma’am gown were molded in latex-blended white paint, so that the Bianchetto surface of the garment was also its substance: this demanded that its model keep her arms crossed in prim admonishment at all times. Another puckered-surface paint-dress was surfaced with gold leaf to create a garment that was both rich and ravaged.

A few dresses from the 1870s that the studio found in its tour of Paris’s flea markets were drenched in beeswax as if trapped in amber, before being hung and left to drip as they hardened. Not unlike the porcelain dress, these were stressed by the wearing they received on the runway, and left trails of cracked wax behind them. Some more 19th century dresses, long preserved but rendered desperately delicate by time, were mounted on fabric and then removed to leave their imprints on ‘new’ dresses: tattered into matter. Upcycled metal wires, vintage velvets, fringed blankets, furniture jacquards, and brittle tapestries were all refashioned into furniture for the human form.

The draping, very Martens-ian, was wonderful. Complexly whipped and whorled, it surged around the body in turmoils like visible emotional weather events: these were charted in reams of taffeta in matte cream or shiny lavender, as well as the metal wires. Less intricate but still impactful were the tailored looks overlayered with silk and lace that created a sleek collision of gender categorizations, and the gowns in faded florals into which were sliced creamy scars of pleating.

The masks might look unsettling; the original point of them was to divert attention away from the person towards the garments being worn, but today many observers seem to find that this Margelian withholding of identity is somehow offensive by proxy. On the ground, however, the most challenging aspect of this collection was when heelless shoe and floor length hem sometimes disagreed with that rough cement floor. No wobble, however, ever quite led to collapse. In an era of globalization and standardization in which identity is commodified as data, this Maison Margiela was fiercely resistant, spiritually elusive, and beautifully imperfect."

https://www.maisonmargiela.com/

BEAUTY: Clothing--Issey Miyake

On this eve before the start of National Poetry Month, here is clothing as poetry. Issey Miyake FW '26-'27 women's collection. Exquisite.

https://www.isseymiyake.com/

BEAUTY: Clothing--Rick Owens

Regular readers know that when I share haute couture, I generally post coverage of men's clothing during Fashion Weeks, and only houses that are on-calendar, with a few exceptions. But this ethereal FW '26-'27 womenswear collection my beloved Rick Owens just showed is amazing. And I need to share it.

Titled "Tower," it is the companion show to his menswear show of the same name (each season he titles his men's and women's collections the same). Feminine, yet savage--a pleasing combo. But I mean, come on...just look at the structure and volume.
Structure. And. Volume.

https://www.rickowens.eu/

BEAUTY: Clothing--Willy Chavarria

Paris Fashion Week wrapped yesterday and before I move on, I want to share a...it can't be called a fashion show, a runway show...it is performance art colliding with the art of costume. Willy Chavarria topped his beautifully heartfelt show last January, seen here, with this incredible concert / Broadway show / runway happening / film presentation for his Fall Winter '26-'27 collection. The showspace is enormous, the music fitting, and the clothes are on extras wandering around this city scene while a relationship plays out to a tragic conclusion. This is the power of art.

https://willychavarria.com/

BEAUTY: Clothing--Robert Wun

Wow.

This.
This is art.

Designer Robert Wun showed his Fall Winter '25-'26 collection last week. I always say couture at this level is wearable art but in this case it literally is. Male and female models wore sculpted arms as additional accessories. The bloody hand prints, the paint spatters, the mold blooms, and the scorch marks, all rendered in sequins and beads are stunning. The sculpted nature of some of the silhouettes showed that they change depending on which angle one sees it. The show unfolded like a surreal hallucination, riddled with dream logic. He called the show "Becoming" and described the collection as a journey into "the depths of human desire and imagination." Indeed, he closed the show with a wedding gown, a traditional move harking back to the golden age of couture when Christian Dior started the practice...but this was no traditional gown. The veil was held up by a disturbing little ghost perched atop the head. When the bride removed her hands from her waist, she revealed their imprint into the peplum of her top. A symbol. A message. An omen. 

https://www.robertwun.com/

Dolce and Gabbana Alta Moda/Alta Sartoria 2025

Wow, please take the time to watch the video of this jaw-dropping show of Dolce and Gabbana's most recent Alta Moda collection for women inspired by the culture, architecture, and imagery of ancient and 1950s Rome, presented at the Roman Forum itself! At sunset, a hundred-plus extras dressed in costumes from Fellini's "Satyricon" filled the show space where models paraded looks made of breastplates and sections of Roman soldier armor or skinny cocktail dresses from the Dolce Vita era when Rome was reborn after WW II and Anita Ekberg frolicked in the Trevi Fountain. Each piece is literally a one-of-a-kind work of art...if a client buys one, it is the only one in existence.

And not to be outdone by the spectacle, D&G showed their Alta Sartoria collection (the men's version) the next evening, also at sunset, at the Castel Sant'Angelo in Rome. Inspired by the Catholic Church, the collection is a wild riff on ecclesiastical clothing surpassing anything even the Vatican could produce! Models, each wearing glasses and hair set in pincurls like cherubs, walked out of the Castel and down a gold carpet shaped, appropriately enough, like a cross while assembled cardinals in red watched from plinths on the Ponte Sant'Angelo.

And take a look at this short glimpse into the making of one of the looks...the quality is mind boggling.

https://altamoda.dolcegabbana.com/

I would bet money that D&G have seen--and were inspired by--the famous (infamous) Vatican fashion show segment from Fellini's incredible mockumentary travelogue "Roma." It is at once hilarious and absolutely terrifying, quite on purpose.

BEAUTY: Clothing--Maison Margiela

Holy s--t, what an incredible, amazing, and frightening SS '26 collection Glenn Martens (previously here) just showed for his debut as creative director at Maison Margiela--what an explosive way to start his tenure (he was previously creative director at Y/Project and Diesel as well as his own eponymous brand)! Some pieces like the opening plastic encasements looked as if they were consuming the models (Martens said they referenced blown glass). Other pieces gave a ghostly appearance, like sepulchral shrouds. The sense of the entire collection was a deft and deep combination of the original DNA of the Margiela brand (the penchant for collage, the laboratory-like experimentation of hybridizing silhouettes, and love of Frankenstein-ing disparate pieces together), the historical corsetry and scavenged trinkets, baubles, and jewels from John Galliano's (previously here) too-short-time at the house, and of course the twisting volumes of Martens' own vernacular.

The collaged, rummaged effect of the materials (plastic, leather, metal, clumps of tulle) is apocalyptic ("When the world is running down/You make the best of what's still around" said Sting) in addition to being arrestingly layered. Fashion journalist Luke Leitch reports: "A great deal of this Glenn Martens for Maison Margiela debut Artisanal collection is… thrifted! Martens and his teams built a lot of the pieces from second-hand knits and other pieces sourced from Guérissol, a chain of six stores around Paris at which pieces generally cost just 5 euros. So Martens wasn’t kidding when he said: 'the preciousness of showing you are extremely rich just doesn’t fit into the Margiela language. So we’re not going to do a $75,000 dress, all hand-embroidered or whatever, because that wouldn’t fit in here. But we are going to find a different form of opulence and richness, and hopefully somebody a little bit more cheeky will engage with it.'"

And the plastic and metal masks and veils obscuring every model's face was a nod to another Margiela motif that has appeared many times over the years. The result is disturbing, a little eerie.

The showspace itself was styled to reflect the decaying aesthetic created by the garments. Martens said the look was "all disheveled and falling into pieces...I’m from Bruges, which has this whole gloomy, Gothic kind of gloominess." Large photocopied pieces of Georgian rooms with enormous panels of boiserie, marbled alcoves of cathedrals, or dark caves of ancient plaster papered the walls, crumpled, ripped, torn, but patched and cobbled together to approximate its origin.

Every garment and the show feels somehow miraculously fresh and new even though, as the saying goes, there is nothing new under the sun. But what is new is how things under our sun are put together and Martens has shown a commanding, supreme imagination. What he created is truly stunning. Please do watch the video below to see the pieces in motion...or not in motion as it were.

https://www.maisonmargiela.com/

BEAUTY: Clothing--"Les Fantômes du Cinéma" by Dior

This was, unexpectedly, quite moving to me...seeing the spirits interacting with the living, and the idea of beauty, the ephemeral nature of beauty, and the idea of making things lovey before you go...

"'Les Fantômes du Cinéma', a film by Matteo Garrone that conjures up the intersection of temporalities and identities conveyed through Maria Grazia Chiuri’s new collection. The grounds of Rome’s Villa Albani Torlonia are the setting for dreamlike scenes in which ghostly figures clad in costumes associated with the films of Fellini, Visconti, Pasolini and more interact with the models as they prepare to unveil the House's latest creations. Featuring cameos by the photographer Brigitte and members of the House’s ateliers, this enchanting episode of magical realism is a poetic paean to the powerful femininity the Creative Director of Women’s collections has championed since the start."

https://www.dior.com/en_us/fashion/womens-fashion/ready-to-wear-shows/cruise-2026-show

BEAUTY: Clothing--Moncler x Jil Sander (Lucie and Luke Meier)

Wow, look at this collection created by Jil Sander creative directors Lucie and Luke Meier for the venerable skiwear/winter outerwear brand Moncler's City of Genius project. Such simple, monastic beauty certainly fits the winter season.

https://www.moncler.com/
https://www.jilsander.com/

BEAUTY: Clothing--Paolo Carzana

London Fashion Week is wrapping up and I am so pleased to end on this high note:

Welsh designer Paolo Carzana showed up on my radar last year. He is a newer designer but has already amassed some clout: he is a recipient of the British Fashion Council NewGen award and has BFC support money to put on shows, and is also an artist in residence at the Sarabande Foundation, the arts foundation supported at the bequest of Lee Alexander McQueen.

His vision is fairly singular, much like McQueen. While promoting his Fall Winter '23 collection entitled "Queer Symphony," he said, "It’s mainly related to this idea that everything I was ashamed of as a kid is now my strength. Up until I was 17, I would literally pray every night to wake up straight, and pray to be normal. And every single day, I was bullied in school, when I didn’t even know who I was."

It is a shared story among many of us in the gay community, one I have heard many times...surviving emotional, psychological, and often physical abuse and attacks to emerge on the other side, despite or probably because of it all, with a hunger and drive to create something beautiful, to express a force that could not be taken from us. I can attest to the truth of this from my own personal experience. So I feel great tenderness toward and interest in the creations of Paolo Carzana.

His sartorial vernacular is made of delicate fabrics tied and stitched together that seem like creations from some dream world, as if those wearing his garments should be lounging around on marble terraces in bright Pre-Raphaelite splendor, or in a lush production of Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream." The cuts feel like they are memories of historical clothing, like tattered remnants of a far-away homeland after a shipwreck, and his beautiful sheer, ripped, ruched tops and trousers seem like they belong on wood sprites, elves, fairies. There is a hushed beauty to the silhouettes and construction of the garments that casts a spell.

So for this SS '25 collection at London Fashion Week, whimsically entitled "How To Attract Mosquitoes," he showed his wonderful creations not on a catwalk at a flashy location but in his own back garden at his home in Hackney. He told British Vogue, "I feel it’s completely away from what is [typically] considered a fashion show. I’m not interested in influencers; I’m not interested in any of that. I [want] to offer a much more sentimental experience that isn’t about smoke and mirrors." Speaking to the collection's narrative, he said, "[Last season’s collection] was loosely set in heaven; this one [sees us] going to hell. It feels as if we have gone back to a really strong sense of vanity and not caring for others, not caring for the Earth, caring [only] for ourselves." The antidote he presents is the opposite of fast fashion, the opposite of glitz and bling for its own sake.

The cherry on the cake of his brand is his earnest commitment to sustainability. He uses deadstock or recycled fabric, and he uses plant dyes and spices to color his fabrics, including black walnut, Himalayan rhubarb, wild cherry bark, turmeric, tea, hibiscus, and apple wood. With that, it is so fitting that these lovely, enchanted garments were presented in such a bosky setting...

https://www.paolocarzana.com/ 

BEAUTY: Clothing--Thom Browne

When Thom Browne dreams up a collection, he truly commits to the theming of its presentation, something I admire about him. For his Spring Summer '25 women's and men's collection shown in Paris the other day, he took the upcoming Olympics in the City of Light as an inspiration. The show space held a static tug of war game as the audience filed into the Musée des Arts Décoratifs with its classically carved walls. The official start of the show saw The Spirit Of The Olympics appear to an orchestral fanfare worthy of any Olympics wearing a headpiece made of gold laurel leaves, and the tug of war teams went at it. But there was no apparent winner and they marched out of the space for the couture section to begin.

Browne's deconstructed suits and dresses came out in tones of white (a huge change from his dark collections of late), all made from lightweight muslin, the type of which is used in fashion house ateliers to mock up sample garments. But here, Browne used the material in various weights to create exquisite couture creations. Added to the Browne vernacular is intricate hand embroidery and beading, showing athletes in various poses on several pieces while models carried embroidery hoops with figures...the first model even wore an embroidery hoop hat. But one of the show stopping pieces was a dress showing on one half the human muscular system, as though the model had been flayed open. The other half showed the shape of muscles as seen with skin. And the wedding dress that closes the show is jaw dropping. Also of note: fantastic wrestling boots with cleats and an invisible heel! The final tableau was a trio of models in intricately embroidered and beaded jackets of, you guessed it, bronze, silver, and gold.

Do take a look at the video below. The show proper starts at 15:45. And the creations are wonderful.

https://www.thombrowne.com/

"Techtopia" by BOSS

Presented last week at Milan's Allianz MiCo conference center, the BOSS FW '-23-'24 show was a jaw-dropping spectacle of set design. Sophia the Robot, created by Hong Kong-based Hanson Robotics, greeted audience members as they arrived at the reception area of what BOSS calls their Techtopia, "a vision of the workplace of tomorrow, where game-changing technologies are combined with lush green spaces." Audience members sat at desks with Sophia while the models navigated the layout of the space. Maybe I have simply seen too many sci-fi films but this seemed much more DYS-topian than U-topian. There is something eerie about the five pods scattered around the presentation space that housed a man doing yoga, the BOSS synth-lab for manufacturing fragrances, a VR pod of people reclining in chairs engaged in an unseen digital reality, and two meeting rooms filled with floating plants on a conference table. The bright, clinical lighting is harsh and unrelenting. The entire scene is absolutely worthy of a sci-fi film (it feels a bit like "THX1138") and carries an undercurrent of dread... but the clothes are lovely! While not of the experimental nature of some of my favorite designers, current head of BOSS Marco Falcioni created a collection that Vogue journalist Luke Leitch called "an almost anthropological and at times surreal excavation of the tradition of 'executive dress' at a social moment where Lazy Girl Jobs are trending and 'Working Girl' [the 1988 film] feels like a historical document." Please do take a moment to watch the show below, and marvel at the stage design on the show.

https://www.hugoboss.com/

BEAUTY: Shoes--Amber Ambrose Aurèle

Regular readers know that twice a year I post photos and thoughts about the men's clothing collections from several very unique fashion designers who show at Milan and Paris. So it is unusual for me to post about women's clothing. However, I just came across the work of Amber Ambrose Aurèle and it is stunning. Her shoe creations are incredible wearable works of sculpture. She is from The Netherlands and it only makes sense that one of her collections is an homage to the De Stijl school of art and architecture including the work of painter Piet Mondrian...

"A woman in heels is more dangerous than a loaded gun." – Amber Ambrose Aurèle

https://www.amberambroseaurele.com/

BEAUTY: Clothing--Richard Quinn

This September iteration of London Fashion Week was upended by the death of HRH Queen Elizabeth II and many designers cancelled shows or have rescheduled them for a later date. But some designers chose to move ahead, albeit in a respectful way.

Regular readers know that twice a year--winter and summer--I blog about the marvelous creations designers send down the runway in England, Italy, and France, but for the men's shows only. However, for this posting I want to share with you a very arresting SS '23 womenswear collection at London Fashion Week from Richard Quinn. His intended theme was going to do with surveillance in our modern world and was going to be expressed in his usual riotously colorful creations. But the death of The Queen touched Quinn so deeply that he and his core team of six, plus 20 show-time helpers, worked day and night, in the 10 days after Her Majesty's death to create 22 looks all in black mourning.

Quinn said, "It was a real labor of love, I suppose...It was almost cathartic for us to put all of our emotions of mourning into it. We wanted it to have that kind of real craftsmanship, the beauty of royalty, and to try to turn all of the shapes and embroidery that we do into that kind of that idea of uniform dressing up they did when her father [King George VI] died."

Two ideas strike me about this opulent collection. The first has to do with the sheer amount of variety that Quinn managed to pack into a look that cannot rely on color. His silhouettes are a dizzying lesson in fashion history with cuts and shapes from the Georgian/Regency period of the mid 1700s to the early 1800s, all the way to the 1950s (with references to garments that look as if they could have been by the newly crowned Elizabeth II) and even the mod 60s. But all, masterfully, in black...with complicated layers of beading, brocade, and feathers.

Secondly, I can't help but flash on the idea of public mourning and how Queen Victoria, dressed in black with a veil after losing her beloved Prince Albert, ushered in a style of dressing that lasted for decades with the public in modest black mourning clothing on a seemingly permanent basis. While I don't think the British at large are going to be wearing black for the next thirty years, it is nonetheless a poignant and jarring moment to see so many people reacting to such a momentous, historic shift in culture and society.

https://www.richardquinn.com/